


Stumble In My Footsteps

by Alara J Rogers (AlaraJRogers)



Category: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:20:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlaraJRogers/pseuds/Alara%20J%20Rogers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the only stallion to bear an Element of Harmony, Choco Pie, the Element of Laughter, has always felt a bit like the odd one out. But when the crazed spirit of Chaos, Eris, breaks free from her stone prison and starts playing mind games with the Mane 6, Choco becomes afraid he's going to crack completely. Because for some reason, the pink draconequus has singled *him* out to torment above all the others. And if what she's saying is true... well, it can't be true. She's the spirit of Chaos and Disharmony. Obviously she's just messing with him. Because if it *was* true... then his whole life would have been a sham, and his friendships a hollow lie... and it would be his own fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wait Till Canterlot Gets A Load of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:
> 
> This is not a Star Trek crossover of any kind.
> 
> There are no OCs or genderswaps in this story despite what it may seem. Trust me.

Choco Pie grumbled blearily as his evil, menacing nemesis cackled shrilly at him. "Shut up. I'm up already." He reached out with a hoof and tried to whack the alarm clock, which flew out of his reach, still screaming at him. 

"Oh for Celestia's sake I'm _up!_ " He stumbled out of bed and swiped at the clock again, and missed. A part of his mind reminded him it was his own fault for snoozing it three times and nearly missing opening time for his store. Another part of his mind refused to take the blame for anything so evil as a flying, shrieking alarm clock. It was all Twilight Sparkle's fault. Why had he ever asked her to help him with the getting up in the morning? Clocks were evil. Unicorns who enchanted clocks to fly were also evil. 

"I will defeat you, Twilight Sparkle," he said through gritted teeth. "I will _catch_ your alarm clock, and pitch it into the depths of Tartarus, to be tormented forever by demons with pitchforks and flying toasters singing annoying songs! Take that!" This time he managed to fall on his face while trying to catch the alarm clock. 

"My life hates me." He curled up on the floor, feigning defeat. The alarm clock flew close to him, taunting him. He remained motionless as it grew closer, and closer, and closer, and – 

WHAM! " _Got_ you," he snarled, and then let out a cackling, maniacal laugh of his own as he shut off the alarm. "You shall never defeat Choco Pie! Not as long as my name is Choco Pie! Which I suppose means I should never change my name or the alarm clocks will defeat me!" 

He got up and looked out the window at the brightly shining sun. "I hate you, Princess Celestia," he grumbled. "I hate you so much. You and that ball of fire you keep waving in my face while I'm trying to sleep." 

But there was no help for it. It was time to get up, because Choco didn't like being broke. 

His greatest passion in life – well, his greatest passion that could actually make him some bits, since witty commentary only made you bits if you were either organized enough to write funny books or lucky enough to make it in the world of improv comedy, and his desire to explore and see things that were _different_ wasn't something anypony would pay for nowadays, especially since he'd rather like to do that exploration without losing limbs or starving – was the creation of exotic, artistic confections. He did his best work with chocolate, but there was quite a lot he could do with spun sugar as well, and he was always on the lookout for new exotic fruits and spices he could add to vary the flavors of the sweets he made. As a colt, he'd thought that would make him wildly successful in life, since everyone loves candy. However, Choco quickly learned that there were only three ways to become successful at making candy: work for someone else, operate a shop with regular hours, or be so famous that wealthy ponies gave you commissions. 

His time working for the Cakes had almost destroyed his friendship with them. They were good ponies but Choco was simply too contrary to take well to being anypony's employee; he hated taking orders even when they were good ideas. He also kept rearranging the shop in new creative ways because how could a boring shop attract customers? He hadn't lasted long as their employee. And it was very, very unlikely he'd have better luck working for anypony else. 

Taking commissions from wealthy ponies was, in fact, what Choco dreamed of being able to do, so he could hire employees to do stuff for him that was boring, and he could have the wealth and freedom to travel the world, meet beings that weren't ponies, see sights he'd never seen and just get out of this rut he was living in. However, one couldn't simply hang out a shingle and get the wealthy ponies to flock to one's door, especially not in Ponyville. Maybe he'd have better luck getting his creative genius recognized in Canterlot, but he _hated_ Canterlot. Boring, stuck-up, stuffy ponies totally in love with themselves who couldn't even take a good joke. Rarity had suggested Manehattan, but firstly, rents in Manehattan were outrageous, so you couldn't go there to make it big, you had to be big before going there. Secondly all his friends were in Ponyville. Especially Fluttershy. And Rarity herself proved that the kind of business he wanted to have, where he could keep kind of vague hours and concentrate on the artistic side of his business, was possible to have in Ponyville. So he just had to keep afloat and keep his name out there until he made it. 

Which meant running a shop. With regular hours. That he actually woke up for. 

Sometimes Choco hated his life. 

He owed the fact that he was still in business to his friends. If Twilight hadn't enchanted that alarm clock for him and offered to do his books for him, he'd have been bankrupt either from failing to get up on time to open the store, or from failing to manage his finances, months ago. Applejack had given him good deals on apples to make candied apples with, selling them to him below wholesale until he got on his hooves. Rarity had given him plenty of good business advice, made him a number of stylish outfits to wear at work, and had loaned him a _lot_ of bits while he was starting out, most of which he hadn't managed to repay yet. Rainbow Dash had popularized his work in Cloudsdale so that he had a steady stream of pegasus customers looking for something interesting; most earth ponies weren't really interested in producing food that was exotic and interesting so much as practical and comforting, and most pegasi couldn't make good food to save their lives. His prices were cheaper than Manehattan or Canterlot prices would be, and he always kept his merchandise interesting. He did better business with pegasi than he did with his fellow earth ponies of Ponyville, actually. They were kind of boring. 

Fluttershy hadn't given his business any material help or assistance but Fluttershy's very existence gave him a reason to get up in the morning and keep trying. He was fairly sure nopony knew what a massive crush he had on her – at least he hoped so, because being the only Element of Harmony who was a stallion, with five mares as his partners, could get really awkward if they knew he was in love with one of them, which was the main reason he had never confessed his love to her. That, and he couldn't figure out how it could work. She lived out by the Everfree and would never consider moving; her life's work was there. He had to live in the heart of Ponyville to get to his shop on a timely basis. They couldn't live together unless he was magically transformed into a unicorn and could therefore teleport, which despite the number of times he had earnestly wished for it, had never ever happened and probably never would because magic that could turn an Earth pony into a unicorn or vice versa was unheard of. 

Fluttershy had also given him a lot of advice on being nicer to potential customers. Apparently customers did not appreciate his wit when it was being used to mock them. This was possibly obvious, but Choco had a hard time _not_ making the snarky quips that came into his head, because they were just too funny. Starving to death would not be funny, however, so he was trying his best. 

As he got his clothes on – clothes were annoying and constricting but he looked so _good_ in them, he couldn't resist – Choco heard his doorbell ring. "Oh for Celestia's sake I'm not even open yet!" He glanced at the clock. Nope. Not opening time yet. "Who the _hay—"_

By the time he stumbled down the stairs into the shop and got the door open, he was in a _very_ bad mood. Which vanished the moment he saw who was on his doorstep. " _Fluttershy!_ My favorite pony! Come in, come in, my dear!" He stood and made a dramatic bowing gesture, ushering her into the shop. "What can I do for you, my dear? Candy coating for your bunny's carrots so he'll actually eat them for once? Sweet flavorings for medicine? Or do you just have an _overwhelming_ desire to eat chocolate for breakfast?" 

She giggled. "You're silly, Choco." 

"I'm the Element of Laughter. Comes with the territory, don't you think? Seriously, I am at your disposal." He struck a pose and took on a theatrical tone. "Whatsoever you wish, only say, and I shall provide." 

"I, um, I was just thinking it's going to be Applejack's birthday soon, and maybe it would be a good thing if you and Twilight got together to plan a party for her? If that's all right with both of you?" 

"What a splendid idea! Almost her birthday? I'd entirely forgotten. _Damn_ you, my nemesis!" He shook a hoof at the calendar hanging on the wall. "You think you've won, but with assistance from my sweet Fluttershy, I shall defeat you again!" 

Fluttershy giggled again. There was no sweeter sound in the universe. He liked making ponies laugh, in general, but before he'd met Fluttershy his sense of humor had been much meaner, snarkier, depending heavily on being able to make fun of the failings of others. Fluttershy didn't laugh when he mocked other ponies, and if Fluttershy was there, and she didn't laugh, his joke had failed. So he'd taken more to self-mockery and simple absurdity, because Fluttershy thought those things were funny. "I, um, I haven't talked to Twilight yet but I don't know if maybe she has room in her schedule..." 

"Twilight always has time for her friends," Choco said confidently. "We'll put together something splendiferous. You'll see." 

Choco loved parties. He loved going to them, but even more, he loved hosting them, where he had creative control over the party atmosphere and everypony there was grateful to him for inviting them. Unfortunately, planning a party forced Choco into close personal dealings with his three greatest enemies: clocks, calendars and lists. He was very creative but hopelessly disorganized, so while he'd _planned_ many parties before meeting Twilight, he hadn't actually ever managed to successfully _have_ any. 

Twilight's strengths were matched perfectly to his weaknesses and vice versa. She was organized, obsessively anal to the point where it actually annoyed him sometimes, careful (except with magic, apparently) and focused. She was also an introvert who was completely insecure about the concept of even being at a social occasion, let alone hosting one. So she and Choco would work together to plan the party, where he would provide all the creative direction and she would do the logistics and shoot down his more... unusual ideas (like the exploding marshmallow fluff fountains, which Twilight had pointed out had the potential to seriously hurt somepony. He had to admit that to be the case, and had sadly shelved the plan. Though if he'd had _magic_ , he could totally have managed. Exploding marshmallow fluff! How could everypony not like that? If he were only a unicorn he could make the marshmallow explode out of the fountains without actually having to use explosives, he could use magic and do it safely, and why wasn't he born a unicorn?) Then she'd send out invitations and he'd go in person to make sure everypony got one, or invite them himself if they didn't. It was a great partnership that had resulted in several successful parties (and a few unsuccessful ones, but they didn't talk about those anymore by mutual agreement), which brought cheer and fun and some variety to the incredibly dull everyday life of Ponyville, and that was his main purpose in life. 

"Thanks, Choco," she said. "You're a really good friend, you know?" 

"Don't worry," Choco said. "You can always count on me." With any of the others he'd have pulled them into a brief sideways hug just to be funny, but he didn't dare hug Fluttershy because he wanted, so badly, to hug Fluttershy. "I'll _always_ be your friend." 

* * *

The teacher trotted up to the edge of the Canterlot sculpture garden, followed by a somewhat disorganized gaggle of foals. "I want to start our field trip here, in the world-famous Canterlot sculpture garden.", she said, and walked forward, pointing out the various statues. "That one over there represents 'Friendship'."  A bit further on the winding path, and she pointed out the next one. "All right, my little ponies, this one represents 'Victory'." 

Scootaloo was impressed. Victory was actually pretty awesome-looking, though not as cool as Rainbow Dash. But not 20% less cool, maybe only 5% less cool. "How cool would it be to have that for a cutie mark?" she whispered to her friends. 

"Cool, if you were actually victoryful at somethin'," Apple Bloom said. 

Sweetie Belle was indignant. "That's not a word!" 

Like the important thing was that she made up a word, and not that she was being sarcastic at Scootaloo. "What are you, a dictionary?" Scootaloo asked her. 

Cheerilee, the teacher, interrupted. "Girls! Now this is a really interesting statue. What do you notice about it?" 

Apple Bloom pointed out, "It's got an eagle claw!" 

Scootaloo was not to be outdone. "And a lion paw!" 

Sweetie Belle chimed in, "And a snake tail!" 

"Is that even a snake or is that a dragon tail or something?" Scootaloo asked. 

"And she has a cow horn and a goat horn!" Apple Bloom said. 

"And she's a filly! Well, a filly-like thingy!" Sweetie Belle said. 

Scootaloo was surprised. She hadn't initially noticed the laughing creature was female.  "And her wings don't match," she pointed out. 

"And her mane is all poofy!" Sweetie Belle said. 

Cheerilee interrupted again before Scootaloo had a chance to point something else out so Sweetie Belle wouldn't be ahead. "This creature is called a draconequus. She has the head of a pony and a body made up of all sorts of things, and the name down here on the pedestal says she's Eris, Goddess of Discord. What do you suppose that word means, 'discord'?" 

Sweetie Belle said, "Singing badly!" at the same time as Apple Bloom said "Fighting and stuff!"  

Scootaloo glared at them both.  Those were dumb answers. "It's chaos!" 

"It's not chaos, you dodo, it's singing badly!" Sweetie Belle said. 

"Don't call me things I don't know the meaning of!" Scootaloo shouted at her. "And it is too chaos!" 

"Is not!" 

"You're both wrong!" Apple Bloom said. "It's fighting!" She proceeded to demonstrate her point by shoving Scootaloo, and then it was on. 

Cheerilee pulled the Cutie Mark Crusaders apart from each other, ending the scuffle. "Actually, in a way, you're all right. 'Discord' means a lack of harmony. In music, a discordant note is a wrong note, so 'singing badly' is discordant. Things that don't match each other or don't go together can also be called discordant, so it's also chaos. And, as the three of you have demonstrated, lack of harmony between ponies, or fighting and strife, is also discord. In fact, you three have demonstrated discord so well that you're each going to write me an essay explaining it." 

Scootaloo sighed. She hated writing essays. 

* * *

As the children left the garden, the stone cracked, crumbled, and finally shattered, revealing a living being whose shape was the same as the laughing statue. The garden filled with the sound of hysterical giggling. 

The creature was pink on top, her crazed poofy mane pink, curly and wild. Her dragonesque lower body was gold, ending in a tufted tail. The golden paw of a lioness and the talon of an eagle formed the limbs of her upper body; below, she had a gray goat's leg and a scaly, iridescent green leg like a dragon or a lizard. She spread her wings, one of which was feathered in rainbow colors, the other of which was a bat wing that was bright purple, and reached with her eagle talon up to her head, where she had a jaunty fedora spiked on her goat horn. She took it off and threw it into the air, still giggling. "Hats off! It's party time!" 

The creature jumped off the pedestal, looking around her at the crumbled stone that had been her prison so recently. "I'm getting that déjà vu feeling all over again," she said, and began to laugh manically. "Let's see, improv or script? Improv or script? How about both! I'll do my lines till I forget 'em and then I'll improvise!" She snickered. 

Around her the garden was still, any living things in the garden frightened off by her presence. She giggled. "Oh, look, none of the birdies want to be _friends_ with me? What's the matter, you thought we were friends when you were pooping on my head! I'm good enough to poop on but not good enough to party with? Is that right? Stupid birds!" She snapped her talon, and within the garden, all of the birds suddenly fell from the sky, wingless and flightless. "Now go poop on the ground, see if the ground likes it! 'Cause I got places to be." 

She stretched out her massive, mismatched body, every limb, her tail and her wings extending. "Wow. Feels great to stretch again. Maybe I can help out everypony with that!" A click of her talon and the statues in the garden suddenly elongated, stretching like Silly Putty, taking on a rubbery consistency. "There you go, guys! Have a stretch! That's a thank you present for standing by me for the past umpteen zillion years or whatever!" This made her laugh even more manically than before. 

And then she looked up at the palace above. "Canterlot. The palace. Oh, I remember that place!" Her hat fell back down out of the air, and she grabbed it and stuck it on her head again. "Showtime, colts and fillies. Wait till Canterlot gets a load of _me!_ "


	2. Setting The Stage

In Ponyville, rain began pelting down. 

Choco frowned as he looked out the window. Having a friend on the weather team meant that, despite his personal level of disorganization and also not particularly caring if it rained or not, he always knew the weather schedule, because Rainbow would always tell him, ad nauseam. It wasn't supposed to rain today. Outside, shrieking ponies were running for shelter, clearing the streets within moments. 

He sighed deeply. Ponies were such foals sometimes. "I'm fairly sure you're not all made of sugar and afraid that you'll melt," he muttered. "What's wrong with a little rain?" On scheduled rain days, you'd see ponies strolling down the streets with umbrellas, or even enjoying the feel of rain on their coats, but let it be unscheduled and oh, it was the alpacalypse. Although -- he frowned, peering outside -- the sky _was_ an unusual color. Almost like the sun was setting through the clouds, but it wasn't even midday yet. 

Taking a deep breath, Choco left his shop, hanging the "CLOSED" sign on the door, and strolled out into the rain to see for himself if there was something about this rain that justified the total panic. As the drops pitter-pattered against his coat, he detected a distinct, familiar and _delectable_ smell. Experimentally he tilted his head up, letting some rain fall in. 

_Chocolate milk._ Chocolate milk was falling from the sky. From pink clouds. 

Either he was dreaming or this was the Best Day Ever. 

Buckets! Buckets, who would have buckets? Applejack! Choco raced at full speed to Sweet Apple Acres. 

As he zoomed past, Rainbow Dash yelled down to him, "You trying to break my record there?" 

"I'm going to Applejack's!" 

"I'll meet you as soon as I get this weird storm under control!" 

"Under _control?_ " But she'd already flown off before he could protest. Choco redoubled his speed. If the weather team were working to get the chocolate storm under control, he needed as many buckets as he could get, as quickly as he could get them. 

Applejack was inexplicably surrounded by popcorn. "Where ya goin', sugarcube?" 

"This is an emergency! I need to borrow something from you!" 

"Uh, well, go ahead, I guess! Hay, what are you--" 

He lost the rest of her sentence as he skidded into the barn, identified three yokes' worth of bucket pairs already set up on yokes, and loaded them onto his back as fast as he could, then galloped back outside and crouched, setting the buckets down. 

"Choco? What're ya doin'?" 

He gave her a shocked look. "My dear appley friend, isn't it obvious? It's raining _chocolate milk._ How can I be expected to let that go to waste?" 

"This weather's crazy!" Rainbow Dash yelled down, descending to the point where she no longer had to yell. "The clouds are made of cotton candy! And this kind of thing is happening all over Equestria! Cloudsdale's getting soaked with a major cola storm right now!" 

"Is it raining up?" Choco asked. 

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, Cloudsdale is made of clouds, and clouds make rain, so wouldn't the rain have to shoot up from the clouds rather than falling down from them?" Choco asked, triumphant in his logic. 

"Uh... that's not how it works," Rainbow said. "But don't worry! I'm staying right here until I get control of Ponyville!" 

"You want to _stop_ this?" Choco stared at her. "My friend, perhaps you are not comprehending the situation. This is _chocolate milk_. Chocolate milk!" 

"Ahem," Rarity's voice came from behind them. Choco turned, to find Rarity under a large, elegant, gem-studded umbrella. "I heard about your troubles, Applejack, and I came to see if there's anything I can do without getting wet. Or dirty. Or out from under my umbrella." 

"Troubles?" Choco asked. 

Applejack sounded deeply irritated. "In case you ain't noticed, Choco, all my corncobs for market just exploded into popcorn all over the darned place, my apples just got so big my trees are falling over, and there are _critters!_ Eatin' all my apples! Shoo!" She waved a hoof at the critters in contention, which were jumping up from the ground to grab hold of the monstrous apples. 

"Well, the critters seem problematic, but other than that I'm not seeing a downside..." 

"Fluttershy! Thank goodness you're here! Do something!" Applejack yelled. 

Choco turned, his face lighting up at the sight of Fluttershy, who was trying to coax her demon bunny rabbit out of Applejack's tree. "Now, Angel, you really shouldn't--" 

Before she could finish the sentence, Angel's legs suddenly elongated to the length of stilts, shaped like goat legs, cloven hooves and all. The startled bunny fell out of the tree, onto his new absurdly long legs, which he promptly used to run off... followed by what looked like every other rabbit who lived near Sweet Apple Acres, all in the same condition.  "No! It's not possible! I must be seeing things!" Fluttershy whimpered. 

For the first time Choco felt bad about what was going on. Candy in the sky, popcorn on the ground, chocolate raining from the heavens... he was sincerely trying to comprehend why his friends considered any of this to be a _problem_ , and was failing. Sure, the popcorn would have to be gathered in buckets before it could be sold, but he'd be happy to buy it off Applejack and make popcorn treats out of it; popcorn kept well when you caramelized it. And huge apples? How was this an issue? But Fluttershy's distress got to him. It hadn't looked to him as if any of the rabbits were unhappy with their bizarre legs, but on the other hand, they _were_ all running off, which might mean they were spooked, and just the fact that it was upsetting Fluttershy was bad. "No, I saw the same thing," he said to her reassuringly. "The rabbits really did all just grow stilt-length goat legs." 

This somehow did not reassure her. She whimpered even more, covering her eyes with a wing, and leaving Choco puzzled and somewhat guilty. He'd meant to make her happy to know she wasn't hallucinating. 

Twilight came over the crest of the hill, Spike trotting behind her and a glowing book in front of her. "Don't worry, everyone! I've learned a new spell that'll fix everything." 

"Oh, must you?" Choco murmured, but quietly. 

Twilight's horn lit up with greater intensity. Her brow furrowed in apparent concentration. Then she lowered her head, and a burst of pink light washed over everything, temporarily blinding Choco. 

When it faded, the chocolate rain was still falling, the popcorn was still all over the place, and the apples were still huge. 

Twilight looked stunned. "My fail-safe spell... failed! What do we do?" 

"Uh, give up?" Spike suggested, causing Twilight to glare at him. 

Rarity strolled up to them. "Spike, Twilight will come up with something." As she spoke she passed her umbrella to Twilight. 

"I have an idea," Choco suggested. 

"What?" Twilight asked eagerly. 

He presented Spike with a popcorn string that he'd just soaked in the chocolate milk. "Spike, do you think you could heat this up to evaporate the milk and leave the popcorn coated in chocolate?" 

Twilight sighed. "How about an idea that actually solves the problem?" 

"And how is making the popcorn into chocolate coated candies not solving the problem?" Choco asked. "I could sell them for Applejack and probably the two of us could make far more than she'd have made selling the corn cobs!" 

"Yeah, but what about the ponies that just want to eat the plain old corn, not a chocolate covered popcorn treat?" Applejack said. 

"There are any?" 

Twilight was lost in thought. "Hmm... that gives me an idea, though. Rainbow, can you corral all those clouds in one corner of the sky?" 

Rainbow saluted, and proceeded to do just that. As she gathered the cotton candy clouds into a giant cotton candy cloud, Twilight said, "Applejack, I need you to bring those high-strung storm clouds down to Earth." 

"No problem," Applejack said, and in short order, she had lassoed the cloud. 

Choco sighed. "Ah, well, my buckets were full anyway." 

Twilight whispered something to Fluttershy that he couldn't quite catch. Then Fluttershy said, in an obviously staged voice, "Oh dear. I hope none of the animals see these _delicious_ chocolate-filled cotton candy clouds. I'd hate to have to share them." Predictably, the animals swarmed the cloud mass. 

"You know, I could break that thing up into boxes and sell it," Choco muttered. "We don't _have_ to feed it to the animals." 

Fluttershy nodded. "But they'd really enjoy it. And it'll be easier for them to just eat it up than it would be for you to break it apart. It's really sticky, Rainbow says." 

"And when y'all are done with that," Applejack called, "feel free to have some popcorn for dessert." 

"Oh, come now, surely we can make _some_ treats out of the popcorn?" Choco said desperately. "Don't you think it's a waste to feed all of it to the animals?" 

"Better the popcorn than the apples," Applejack said. 

"You see, Spike?" Twilight said, with a big smile. "You should never give up. There's nothing we can't overcome if we all work together." 

Spike responded to this platitude by burping out a scroll. 

Twilight grabbed it with her magic, unrolled it, and gasped. "Come on, everyone. Princess Celestia wants to see us all in Canterlot immediately!" 

* * *

As the six of them raced in the door to the inner palace, Choco noticed something. 

Celestia was pacing. 

He knew that the other ponies viewed her as practically a goddess, that Twilight in particular thought she could do no wrong, that there was in fact a widespread belief that she was infallible and untouchable. He'd never been able to understand why. Was he the only one who looked at Celestia and saw a mare like any other mare? An intelligent and wise mare, to be sure, a kind and compassionate beauty who reminded him of Fluttershy in some ways, but a mare with feelings like any other mare, somepony who could feel grief or fear or heartbreak. And right now she was afraid. 

"Princess Celestia, we came as fast as we could!" Twilight panted. 

"Thank you, Twilight," Celestia said, her voice showing very little of the strain she felt. Though, how did he know she was feeling strain? Her eyes, he decided. Her face was _almost_ an impassive mask, as usual, but there was fear in her eyes. "Thank you, all." 

"Is this about the weather? And the animals' weird behavior?" Twilight babbled frantically. "What's happening out there? Why isn't my magic working? Is there–" 

Celestia held up a hoof, silencing Twilight. "Follow me," she said. 

They walked to the Great Hall, where the stained glass images of long-ago legends decorated the windows. "I've called you here for a matter of great importance," she said. "It seems an old foe of mine, someone I thought I had defeated long ago, has returned." 

Choco saw Fluttershy creep over to one of the windows and look up at it fearfully. He moved toward her, instinctively trying to protect her from whatever was frightening her. 

"Her name... is Eris, the Goddess of Discord." 

Fluttershy shrieked and bolted, nearly knocking Choco over. Choco caught her. "It's all right," he whispered to her, and looked up at the picture that had frightened her. To be fair, the image was somewhat frightening. 

A creature that looked rather like a dragon, but with the head of a mare, grinned goofily from the window. The creature's appearance didn't bother Choco; she was strikingly asymmetrical and strange, different colors and shapes for her limbs and wings and a cloud of poofy pink mane around a head graced by two different kinds of horns, but he'd always found asymmetry and unusual combinations to be intriguing. He might even have considered the creature attractive, considering that she had the head of a mare, if it weren't for the psychotic grin on her face. 

"Eris is the mischievious spirit of disharmony," Celestia said, sounding... upset. Choco's eyes went wide. Celestia being upset was probably nothing unusual. Being so upset that she'd show it to her "little ponies?" That was alarming. "Before my sister and I stood up to her, she kept Equestria in an eternal state of unrest and unhappiness with her chaotic games." She gestured at a tableau showing a grinning Eris above a carousel, where an earth pony, a pegasus and a unicorn were posed in various positions as they would be in a normal carousel... except that they were wound in chains that held them in those positions, crying out in fear or pain, and Eris' claw was plainly spinning the carousel. "Luna and I saw how miserable life was for Earth ponies, Pegasi, and unicorns alike, so after discovering the Elements of Harmony, we combined our powers and rose up against her, turning her to stone!" 

The final image chilled Choco, but not for the reason the others had. It showed Luna and Celestia, magic firing from their horns, and the manic creature from the other images stood in the center, still laughing crazily, but gray like a cockatrice victim, gray like a statue. Choco started breathing hard. It was his worst fear, the one he'd never told anypony about. 

He'd spent his childhood on the rock farm having screaming terrors of turning into one of the rocks, and finally fled when he'd gotten his cutie mark, as much because of the fear as because the lifestyle of parties and excitement he wanted was incompatible with rock farming. Years and years later, he'd almost gotten over it, and then he'd learned that Twilight had been turned to stone by a cockatrice, and Fluttershy had almost been, escaping it only by using her Stare on the creature and demanding that it turn its victims back to normal. The nightmares had returned full force, then. Twilight said that while it had been a terrifying experience to turn to stone, she remembered nothing about actually _being_ stone, but that wasn't how Choco's nightmares went. In his nightmares, when he turned to stone, he was fully aware and paralyzed, trapped in darkness. 

The psychologist he'd seen, once, for the nightmares had told him condescendingly that he probably suffered from sleep paralysis, and the imagery of turning to stone was how his brain interpreted being half awake but still unable to move from sleep, and had prescribed a potion, which hadn't done anything. Now, confronted with the image of Equestria's beloved princesses inflicting his personal nightmare on that creature, as crazed and cruel as she seemed... he felt almost betrayed, as if his image of the princesses was shattering. He knew Celestia was a mare like any other, but he'd always seen her as kind and gentle. How could she do that to _anyone_? 

"All right, Princess!" Rainbow Dash cheered. 

Choco swallowed back the words that had been forming in his throat. It was obvious, when he looked around at his friends, that they didn't share his opinion. And, well, should he be surprised? Celestia had banished her own dearly beloved sister to the moon; if Eris had been as cruel and dangerous as she was portrayed, maybe there had been no other choice? Maybe Celestia would have taken a different way had there been one, and had grieved that there was not? 

"I thought the spell we cast would keep her contained forever, but since Luna and I are no longer connected to the Elements, the spell has been broken," Celestia said. 

"No longer connected?" Twilight queried. 

They came to an ornate door. "This is Canterlot Tower, where the Elements are kept inside since all of you recovered them. I need you to wield the Elements of Harmony once again and stop Eris before she thrusts all of Equestria into eternal chaos." 

Choco gulped. Was this going to involve turning someone to stone? For making it rain _chocolate milk?_ That seemed horribly unfair. He looked away from Celestia, from his friends -- and his eye was caught by a different image. 

"But why us?" Twilight asked. "Why don't you-" 

"Because we're obviously famous heroes," Choco interrupted. "Look, we have our very own window!" 

The image showed the six of them using the Elements of Harmony to purge Luna of Nightmare Moon. "You six showed the full potential of the Elements by harnessing the magic of your friendship to beat a mighty foe," Celestia said, nodding at him. "Although Luna and I once wielded the Elements, it is you who now control their power, and it is you who must defeat Eris!" 

Okay. Okay, he could do this. The Elements hadn't banished Nightmare Moon again when he and the others had wielded them; they'd purged Luna of her madness. Maybe they would free Eris of hers. From the crazed expression on her face, she was obviously not a sane whatever she was. Just as long as they didn't have to turn her to stone. 

The six of them all looked at each other anxiously. Finally, Twilight said in a voice of determination, "Princess Celestia, you can count on us!" 

"Although, I would like to point out that apparently eternal chaos comes with chocolate rain," Choco said. "There _are_ upsides to this situation." 

"Be serious for once, Choco?" Twilight pleaded. "Princess, we'd be honored to use the Elements of Harmony again." 

Celestia inserted her horn into a small hole in the door and sent a pulse of magic through it. The door slid open, revealing a bejeweled box. 

"Ooh," Rarity sighed. "You can keep the Elements. I'll take that case!" 

"Have no fear, ponies," Celestia said. "I have total confidence that you will be able to defeat Eris with these!" 

She levitated the box over to them and opened it. There was nothing inside. 

The mares in the group all gasped. Even Celestia gaped in shock at the empty box. Choco found himself unsurprised, somehow. If the Elements were Eris' only weakness, she'd be foolish not to grab them and hide them before showing her hoof by transforming the landscape. 

He shrugged. "Oh, well. May as well make the best of the situation, after all! I'm going to go find some more buckets." He started to stroll off, before being yanked back by Applejack. 

"Be _serious_ here, Choco!" she stage-whispered. "This is bad!" 

"The Elements! They're gone!" Twilight stammered, winning the Stating the Obvious award, but then, she was obviously reeling in shock. 

Celestia paced frantically. "That chamber is protected by a powerful spell that only I can break! This doesn't make sense!" 

The sound of a hysterical feminine giggle filled the air. "Make sense? Oh, like it's any fun to make sense! Everypony knows that _nonsense_ is what's fun!" 

Celestia stood her ground like she expected an attack. "Eris! Show yourself!" 

Eris giggled again. "Miss me, Celly Belly?" The image of her spinning the carousel animated and began talking in an echoing voice. "Oh, wait, you didn't! You and Loony hit me straight on, that's right! You know, it's super boring being stuck in a stone statue!" She jumped and landed in the image of the six of them restoring Nightmare Moon to Luna, displacing the Nightmare Moon image. "And sad. And _lonely!_ But you wouldn't know that 'cause I never turned _you_ into stone. Or anypony! Because being stone is no fun at _all_." For a moment her voice became darkly serious. 

"Enough!" Celestia shouted. "What have you done with the Elements of Harmony?" 

Eris giggled again. "Oh, I just borrowed them for a eensy teensy little while. Oh, wait, whoops, I forgot!" She snapped her talon, and in the empty box, a library card appeared, the kind Twilight kept on file when a patron checked out a book. "You need to check out what you borrow, isn't that right, Twilight? Silly me, the things you forget when you spend umpteen zillion years being a statue!" 

"You'll never get away with this, Eris!" Celestia said, almost snarling. Choco stared at her in wonder. There _had_ to be more going on here than just popcorn and chocolate rain for Celestia to be this upset. 

Eris was now sitting on a pedestal in the picture, or rather, lying draped over it. "Blah blah blah hero speech. _Boring!_ I used to think you were fun, Celly, but you're being a real party pooper right now." 

"Hey! Nopony insults the Princess!" Rainbow Dash shouted, and flew at the window. Eris vanished, and Rainbow smacked into the window, hard. She fell down, dizzy, but recovered quickly. 

"Dashie!" Eris yelled cheerfully, her face suddenly taking up most of the window. "Oh my gosh I've been waiting so _long_ to meet you!" 

Rainbow scowled at the window. "How do you know me?" 

"'Cause you're super famous! Everypony talks about you! You're the Element of Loyalty, right? You'd do _anything_ for your friends, or the Princess." 

"That's right!" Rainbow said. "I'll always be loyal to the Princess! And my friends!" 

Eris just giggled again. "It's so funny when you say that!" 

"I can't believe we're wasting our time talking to a tacky window," Rarity complained. 

"Oh, and Rarity! You are so super fabulous." Eris vanished and reappeared in the window where she'd been a statue, wearing what looked like a parody of Rarity's designs, a dress so overloaded with frills and gems that it almost hurt to look at it. "The Element of Generosity! _Always_ willing to drop everything and help a friend!" 

"So you know who we are, big deal," Applejack said. 

"Yuppers! I know _all_ about you." Eris smirked. "Not like it's hard to find out all about you, Applejack! You're the Element of Honesty! You've got no secrets, right?" 

"You seem to know our strengths too," Twilight said. 

"Like I said. I know _all_ about you. All of you." For a moment that dark, serious note came into her voice again. Then she laughed. "You're Twilight Sparkle, the element of magic, Princess Celestia's faithful student and Ponyville's biggest bookworm! Fluttershy, you're the Element of Kindness, and Choco... oh, _Choco..._ " Her voice sent chills up his spine. It was teasing, but the dark undercurrent was back. "Your Element is _totally_ the best. Laughter! 'Cause what's better than a good joke?" 

She then proceeded to dance a can-can on top of the image of Twilight's head. Despite the seriousness of the situation, despite the fear he'd begun to feel when she'd said his name, Choco couldn't help snorting with laughter at the ridiculousness of it. 

"Choco, come on," Twilight pleaded. 

"But _look_ , Twilight, she's dancing on your head!" 

"Stop stalling, Eris! What have you done with the Elements of Harmony?" 

"I ate 'em! They were super yummy! Tasted like cupcakes!" Eris said, and started giggling again, bouncing between different images. 

"You couldn't have," Celestia said, aghast. 

"No fooling you, Celly! You're right, I couldn't, cause I couldn't find _any_ frosting to put on them! What kind of a town is this where nopony can make good frosting?" She bounced to another window, and another, and another, laughing the whole time. "No, but seriously! Just think of the most twisty idea you can think, and that'll be how you find them!" 

And then she vanished, although the sound of her giggles lingered in the air. 

"Can we go home now?" Fluttershy whimpered. 

"What do you reckon she meant?" Applejack asked. "The most twisty idea we can think? What the heck is that supposed to mean?" 

"Twisty idea... twists... that's it!" Twilight pointed her hoof at the gardens below. "I'll bet Eris hid the Elements in the palace labyrinth! What else would be a 'twisty idea'?" 

Choco frowned. "That doesn't sound right..." 

"It's the best we've got," Rainbow said. "I say let's do it!" 

"Good luck, my little ponies. The fate of Equestria is in your hooves," Celestia said, bowing to them. 

"Thanks, Princess," Twilight said. "We won't let you down." 

Choco followed his friends as they all raced out the door, toward the gardens, but his mind was racing in the opposite direction. A labyrinth wasn't a twisty _idea_ , it was a twisty _thing._ What could possibly be the most twisty idea one could think about where the Elements would be? 

He sighed. It didn't really matter, of course. Twilight was the acknowledged leader of the group. Possibly because he spent so little time actually being serious, nopony ever really took Choco's ideas seriously. Unless he could come up with a better suggestion, they'd have to follow Twilight's plan.


	3. Into the Labyrinth

They approached the labyrinth as a group. If the sun had been brightly shining, the hedge maze might have seemed friendly and inviting, but with the pink clouds dimming the sun, even Choco had to admit the entranceway to the maze was forboding. Fluttershy backed up and crouched. "W-We have to go in _there_?"

"I thought you _were_ in there, at the Gala," Choco said. It had only been a few weeks ago. He had really wanted to accompany her, when she'd told him she was going to the gardens to befriend the animals, but he had also really wanted to try to sell chocolates to the nobility. Ambition had won out over friendship, a choice he regretted now, mostly because it hadn't worked. The nobles and fancy upper-class ponies of Canterlot had been happy to take his chocolate confections, until he'd overheard them insulting Applejack for her humble farmer origins, and perhaps he might have had a few sharp words to say about that, and maybe he'd said them just a little bit too loudly, and certainly throwing an entire dish of fondue at an Equestrian Prince for insulting one of his friends and treating another badly had probably been a really bad idea, so all in all it would most likely have been better if he'd accompanied Fluttershy. Though dammit, she was amazingly cute when she was disheveled, covered with twigs and shrieking. 

"N-no, I didn't go into the _labyrinth_ ," Fluttershy stammered. "It looks so dark, and scary..."

"Not a problem!" Rainbow Dash said confidently, with a flap of her wings. "Eris the dummy forgot about these babies! I'll just do a quick flyover and we'll have the Elements in no time." At this point, her wings vanished, and she fell, scrabbling at the air. "My wings!"

In flashes of light, Fluttershy's wings, and Twilight and Rarity's horns, all vanished. Fluttershy shrieked. Twilight and Rarity stared at each other in horror. "Your horn! My horn!" they said in unison, and then screamed. Choco's attention was caught by something else, though.

"Did – did any of you notice if this giant cake was here before we arrived?" he asked.

And then the cake exploded. Choco fell back with a small shriek of his own, as fireworks and confetti blasted out of the cake, along with a long, snaky creature that was very, very pink. "SURPRISE!" she yelled.

As they all shrank back in horror, Eris started laughing hysterically. "You should see the looks on your faces! Wow, did I ever get you good or what?"

"Give us our wings and horns back!" Twilight shouted.

Eris pouted. "But earth ponies are awesome. Aren't earth ponies awesome, Applejack?"

"Uh... yeah, but—"

"But nothing! Are you all ashamed of being earth ponies now? You think you're too good to be earth ponies?"

"I think," Applejack said, "that ponies oughta be what they're born to be. Ain't no shame in being an earth pony – we're awesome, just like you said. But so are unicorns and pegasi. Every pony's the best pony, so long as they're true to themselves. You take away their wings and horns, then they can't be."

"Welllll, I'm gonna give them back, _eventually._ I just took 'em to make sure nopony cheats! You see, first rule of the game is: no wings, no horns and no magic."

"The first rule?" Rainbow Dash said.

"Second rule is, everypony has to play or the game is over, and I win!" Eris giggled. 

"But now wait a minute," Choco said. " _You_ have wings, horns and magic, so doesn't that mean you automatically forfeit, if the rule is that using wings, horns or magic causes a forfeit to the other team?"

Eris put her paw to her chin. "Good thinking! I can't really take away my own magic, though. I mean, if I could, then how could I give everyone back theirs? See, that's the thing you never think of, Choco! Once you give up your magic, you can't use your magic to get it back!"

"The thing I never think of? When has this even come up?"

"You could agree to not use magic," Twilight said. "And take off your wings, at least."

"Yeah, I _could_ take off my wings and horns!" She snapped, and the accoutrements were suddenly missing from her body. "But if I was gonna play like I was on the pony side, and I couldn't use my magic... well, then I'd guess I'd have to do what you ponies do. You're using just your hooves? I'd have to use just my _paws._ " She extended the claws on her lion paw and began ostentatiously filing them.

"Th-that's all right!" Fluttershy interjected. "You can keep your wings! You don't have to u-use your paws!"

"Fluttershy, what gives?" Rainbow demanded. 

"Isn't it obvious?" Choco said. "Eris is bigger than any of us, and has the body of a predator. Perhaps _you're_ in the mood to fight a dragon griffin hoof-to-hoof, but obviously Fluttershy thinks it's a bad idea, and given that she's the animal expert..."

"She's also the expert on being a scaredy pony," Rainbow scoffed.

"Guys. No fighting. This is the Spirit of _Discord_ we're up against. That means conflict, disharmony, strife. We have to stick together or we play into her hooves – I mean, paws," Twilight said.

"I _am_ right here," Eris pointed out.

"Oh, well, far be it for us to be rude to the ruffian who stole the Elements, _and_ our horns and wings, _and_ did her best to utterly ruin my coiffure by pouring chocolate all over it," Rarity said sarcastically.

"Hmph. Well, if you're going to be _rude_ , I don't need to stand around here listening to it," Eris said. "Good luck, everypony, and have fun!" She bounced, springing improbably high into the air, and vanished in a flash of light.

Choco's friends all looked at each other with varying degrees of alarm – except for Fluttershy, who was so terrified she was crouched on the ground with her hooves over her eyes. Choco knelt down beside her. "Hey," he said softly. "We beat Nightmare Moon. We even beat that dragon you were so scared of – in fact, _you_ did that. We can beat this too."

"That's right, everypony," Twilight said. "Never fear. We have each other!"

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash added. "Like Twilight said, there's nothing we can't overcome if we all stick together!"

"She won't let us," Choco murmured under his breath. He didn't want to say it out loud, because he didn't want to frighten Fluttershy any further, but some instinct was telling him that Eris was going to try to separate them. Ponies working together were harmony, and she was disharmony. The others, however, found Twilight and Rainbow's words encouraging, and it brightened them up. 

Choco stayed close to Fluttershy as they all approached the opening of the maze. "All right, everypony," Twilight said, "let's do this!"

"Together!" they all shouted in response, each putting one hoof down. Choco desperately wished he could put a leg around Fluttershy and still be able to walk. But he couldn't, and they'd laugh at him if he seemed too clingy, and maybe they might even guess his feelings. _If we get separated, I'll come and find you, Fluttershy,_ he thought, putting his hoof down with the rest.

And then hedges sprang up between each of them, separating each pony to their own little corridor. Despite the fact that Choco had expected something like this to happen, it still startled him, and he cried out in shock the same as the others did.

"Stay calm, everypony!" Twilight shouted from behind her hedge. "All of us, head to the middle as fast as you can, and we'll regroup there!"

"Moving out!" Rainbow Dash shouted.

"See you in the center," Rarity called.

Applejack just cheered. "Yee-haw!"

Fluttershy whimpered, gasping. "What's that? Who's there?"

"Fluttershy, hang on, I'm going to try to find you," Choco said. "Don't panic, okay? Just stay where you are!"

"O-okay," Fluttershy called through the hedge. "But... but maybe I should try to get to the center like the others are, and we can meet up there?"

"Uh... yes, that would probably be better, if you're up to it."

He heard her take a deep breath. "I can manage."

"Okay then, see you there!" He started forward, resolutely. He was good at mazes. He ought to be able to solve this quickly and then find Fluttershy. And the rest of them, but they could take care of themselves. 

* * *

Applejack raced through the maze, heading for the center, when a branch she had just gone past caught her eye. She turned and came back to it. Yes, there were three Red Delicious sitting right there on the ground.

She barely had time to formulate the question to herself as to what three random Red Delicious apples were doing lying on the ground in the Canterlot hedge maze, where she knew for a fact no apple trees grew, when the apples started rolling away from her, on their own. "What in tarnation?"

There was no help for it – she had to follow them back to where they were going. She figured they had to be leading her to Eris, which was frightening, but maybe the weird pink creature would drop some more hints.

Abruptly she came to an apple grove. Which, as she'd just been thinking, _did not exist_ in Canterlot. "Where am I?" As she looked up, one of the Red Delicious fell off a tree and hit her on the head.  

All the apples started falling off the trees. There was no rhyme or reason to what grew on what tree; Red Delicious and Gala and Golden Delicious and Granny Smith apples ( _oh, Granny Smith, and Mac and Apple Bloom too, hang in there; we're gonna put a stop to all this weirdness, don't you fret)_ all on the same tree, or trees in this case, mixed together higgledy-piggledy, and now they were all falling down with nopony bucking the trees. Apples rolled toward her, and the sound of eerie laughter echoed through the grove. The apples rolled around her in a circle, forcing her to spin to keep track of them, and formed up into piles by variety – Red Delicious, Gala, and the Granny Smith pile had the few Golden Delicious in it as well. Or did it? She couldn't see them anymore. They morphed into faces, and now it was clear that the laughter was coming from them.

"Who are y'all?" she asked.

The pile of Red Delicious apples spoke, flattening and thinning eerily as it did so. "The keepers of the grove of truth," it said. "You may ask us..."

The Gala apples spoke. "...one question..."

And now the Granny Smiths, with a voice wholly unlike _her_ Granny Smith. "...past, future or present."

"But be warned..." the Red Delicious said.

"...that the truth..." said the Galas.

"...may not always be pleasant," the Granny Smiths spoke.

She couldn't follow them all with her eyes. She was getting dizzy spinning around trying to keep track of which one was talking. "All right then. I don't trust this place worth a hill of beans, but I've got a really bad feelin' about this gal Eris. What's gonna come of this mission we're on?"

The apple piles slithered toward the pond in the center of the grove. Applejack followed. 

"For the answer you seek..." the Red Delicious said.

The Galas said, "...go ahead, take a peek."

That was annoying as all get-out. Why couldn't just one of them finish a sentence at a time? She peered into the water.

She saw herself and her friends, against the backdrop of a crazy, chaotic version of Ponyville where houses she recognized spun upside down or sat on floating chunks of earth. The Rainbow Dash in the pond snapped, "I hope I never see you again!" Fluttershy, Rarity and Choco all chimed in with angry agreement, and Twilight said, "It's settled then."

Applejack reeled. "No! Our friendship? Over?!"

The apple piles bobbed up and down, as if they were on strings. Applejack held her hat to her chest. "It can't be true. It just can't!" How could a friendship as strong as the six of them had be destroyed so easily by one creature? She remembered the whole gang of them staging an intervention when she was well on the road to working herself to death, remembered Choco throwing a bowl of his chocolate fondue at that stuck-up prince who'd sneered at her food – which hadn't helped her sell apples any, but she'd appreciated the sentiment – remembered how they'd faced that dragon together... remembered Nightmare Moon. How could experiences like that be thrown away so easily? "That just can't be the truth."

"When all the truth does..." the Galas whispered to her.

The Granny Smiths chimed in. "...is make your heart ache, sometimes a lie is easier to take." And they laughed.

Dizzy and bewildered, Applejack struggled. _The truth is ugly. It's going to end our friendship. If I'm honest, then I lose my friends. If I'm not honest, then I lose myself._

And then there was a sympathetic pink face in front of her. "'Course you could always try the third option," Eris said, and her voice was strangely warm and comforting. Soothing, authoritative. She could trust this voice in the chaos of her roiling emotions. "After all, Granny Smith always taught you, if you can't say something nice, you can always not say anything at all."

_Yes!_ Applejack rejoiced. _Yes, I can not say anything at all!_ If she was silent then she wouldn't tell lies to betray herself and she wouldn't tell truths to betray her friendships and everything would be all right!

From behind her, she heard Twilight's voice. "Applejack! Thank goodness! I thought I heard voices over here. Who were you talking to?"

Applejack turned to her and smiled, but said nothing.

"Applejack? Are you okay?" Twilight asked. Applejack nodded vigorously.

Twilight came closer. "You can't talk?" 

Applejack considered this, and shook her head. She _could_ talk, it was just a terrible idea that would destroy their friendship. 

"Then... why won't you answer me?"

Applejack made a head-tossing motion, trying to convey that that wasn't important. The important thing was finding their friends. Because now that Applejack was silent, the truths that would tear their friendship apart would never be spoken, and they were all safe.

* * *

Panting at the exertion, Rarity came up a hill. "I was expecting an audience with the Princess, not outdoor sports." She tossed her head, eyes closed, to demonstrate her disdain – and walked forehead first into something very hard. She shrieked with a combination of pain and shock – mostly the shock though. But when she opened her eyes and saw what she had hit, she gasped for an entirely different reason. "Oh my..."

The rock that stood before her had three diamonds set into it, perfectly shaped and resembling her cutie mark. Obviously they were intended for her – why else would they look like her cutie mark? They glittered as no gems she'd seen in the past ever had, and she felt an overwhelming _need_ , a wild possessiveness. They were hers. They had to be hers.

She heard a high-pitched giggling, and a pink face swam into view on the surface of the diamonds. "Lucky you, Rarity! What a find! How do you like these, huh? Are they nice? I bet you want 'em..."

"Yes..." Rarity whispered, feeling as if she was in a trance. Like she was dreaming, but she never wanted to wake up. "I do want... very much..." Abruptly she remembered what she was supposed to be doing. "No! No, I shan't succumb to such fabulousness." Her body seemed so heavy as she pulled it away.  "Must... get to the center..." ( _why?_ ) "to meet... the others..." ( _but why, if I can have this instead? If they were true friends, would they really want me to leave such a lovely find behind?)_ Her control snapped, and she lunged at the stone. "Mine!" she howled, and began battering at the stone with forehooves, then hind hooves. No finesse, she had no horn. No hope of staying clean with all the dust. But those diamonds were worth it. They were worth anything. And oh, oh, could it possibly be? They extended back farther than they seemed. Larger and larger and... was this _entire chunk of rock_ merely a thin veneer of mountain stone over a gigantic, gorgeous _diamond?_ And perfectly cut, too! No diamond in the rough could _ever_ be so beautiful!

After great effort, she had finally exposed her prize. "Well, Rarity. It took forever, but it was worth it," she said to herself. "Who knew three little gemstones would turn out to be this handsome hunk of a diamond?" She rubbed herself on the diamond, seductively. It was _soo_ beautiful. Just touching it sent shocks through her flesh, and feelings she'd only ever before had for handsome stallions. "Now to get you home." It was so ironic that the beautiful diamond that made her knees weak with desire needed all her strength to carry it! But she wouldn't fail. Her diamond was _hers_!

No sooner had she gotten it properly mounted on her back than the wall next to where she'd been bashing out the diamond crumbled, and Twilight was standing there with Applejack. "Rarity!" Twilight said. "Are we glad to see... Why are you carrying a humongous boulder?"

Rarity's hackles had been raised the moment she saw her so-called friends. So they wanted her diamond, did they? Well, they could just turn green of jealousy, then, because she wasn't sharing. "What do you mean, 'boulder?' This big beautiful bedazzling rock is a diamond!" And to think she'd thought Twilight was intelligent. "And it's all mine. Keep your envious little eyes off it! I found it and it's mine fair and square!" Grunting in a very unladylike way, she staggered forward with her burden, every so often checking behind her to make sure neither of the other mares were trying to steal her diamond from her.

"I don't want your diamond, Rarity," Twilight said. "But I'm worried! Applejack can't talk, or won't, and here you are, carrying this huge rock, which you think is a diamond—"

"It _is_ a diamond! Really, Twilight, if you can't see the _glorious_ beauty of this fabulous, _huge_ gem, I cannot imagine what is wrong with you."

"That's not the point! We're supposed to be finding the Elements, so we can stop Eris!"

"Oh, and I'll bet you expect me to put down my lovely diamond so I can _help_ you, is that it? I was _not_ born yesterday!" She sniffed, which was hard to do when she could barely stand upright under the load. "I know you just want to take it for yourself. But you can't. It's mine, mine, all mine!"

"This has to be Eris' doing," she heard Twilight mumble. "It just has to be. Somehow. But what kind of magic could even cause this?"

As if magic was involved here. "I pity you, Twilight. You can't see perfection when it's staring you in the face," Rarity said coldly. "Go, construct all the little fantasies you want. Just keep your hooves off my gem!"

"I will, I will. I don't even want it."

"And what about you, Applejack? Are you going to try to steal my diamond?" Applejack shook her head. "Good. I'm glad we're all clear on this!"

* * *

Fluttershy hid in the hedge, teeth chattering, trying to nerve herself up to leave. She jumped out. "Okay, I can do this. I can..." Something brushed past her face. She shrieked, and dove back into the hedge again, before it sank in what that had been. "Oh, wait a minute... Butterflies?" So beautiful! They looked just like her cutie mark! "Wait! Don't leave me here!" She raced after them as they fluttered off.

And came into a clearing, where there was a statue. A mare, her face carved in an expression of shock. After a moment, Fluttershy realized it was a statue of herself. 

"Eeee!" Fluttershy backed away, tripping over her own tail as she did so. 

One of the butterflies spoke in a high-pitched feminine voice. "Remember the time the cockatrice turned you to stone, Fluttershy?"

"Remember how it felt?" another butterfly asked.

They were animals. Her cutie mark. For some reason this allowed Fluttershy to calm the racing of her heart. "I do, yes. It wasn't very nice. But Twilight said, once she'd been turned all the way she didn't even feel it – she was unconscious until the cockatrice reversed itself." She knew butterflies didn't really speak Equestrian, and certainly not so clearly. In fact she generally got very little communication from butterflies; they were peaceful creatures who loved to flutter in the fresh air and collect the sweet-smelling pollen and take mates in their brief dances of love, but they didn't have a lot of brains. These weren't really butterflies. This was Eris communicating with her. Had to be. 

"But what if she wasn't?"

"What if she'd been trapped in the cold, dark, lonely stone? With no friends? No one to talk to her? No one to love her?"

"What if that had happened to you?"

Now she knew it was Eris. Fluttershy straightened up. "It would have been awful," she said, knowing who she was really speaking to. In the palace, she'd looked at the picture of Eris and _felt_ an overwhelming wave of rage and malice and grief and desire for vengeance, and it had terrified her. Stained glass windows couldn't have emotions like animals could and ponies could; what was she feeling? When Eris had appeared at the start of the maze, Fluttershy had sensed from her mockery, amusement, but still, some of the anger, some of the malice. But the butterflies weren't angry. The butterflies were just sad. So, so sad. "My friend Choco has nightmares about that."

"He would, wouldn't he?"

The pink draconequus appeared, sitting on the edge of a stone fountain in the clearing. "But he's sooo eager to inflict _his_ personal nightmare on someone else, isn't he?"

"I don't think any of us are eager to do that," Fluttershy said. "I don't think anypony _wants_ to turn you to stone."

Eris looked directly at her. Her eyes were golden, but her pupils were blue, blue as a cloudless sky, blue as a serene lake. "But that's what the Elements will do to me. If you find them all."

Fluttershy shook her head. "I'm sure they don't have to. They purified Princess Luna. Maybe they can help you, too!" She reached out a hoof. "If you paid attention to ponies' feelings, if you didn't cause chaos that terrifies them and makes it hard for them to live, you could make friends. I know it must have been very lonely for you in stone; wouldn't you like to have friends?"

Eris laughed bitterly. "You'd think it would work like that, wouldn't you? But it doesn't. Ponies won't be friends with me because I have to make chaos, and because they think I look weird! Even when I tried, it didn't work, Fluttershy. Nopony would be my friend."

"I could, if you wanted me to be," Fluttershy said, heart pounding. Was it possible to tame this creature with the power of friendship, without resorting to the Elements? She was right, stone for a thousand years, or more, would be a horrible, horrible fate for anypony, especially if they had to be awake and aware during it.

"I know you could," Eris said, smiling at her, and then shook her head. "But that's not how this movie goes, not yet anyway, and I'm looking for a deeper rewrite than _that._ "

"I don't understand."

"I can't hurt you, Fluttershy," Eris said. "You're so cute and sweet and kind and _ugh!_ I just want to eat you all up! Except not really eat because I don't eat ponies, that'd be gross." Her head snaked forward, looking up at Fluttershy's with a pleading expression. "But can you hurt me? Can you turn me to stone, for an umpteen zillion years, in the cold and the dark and I can't see anything and I can't feel anything and I can't talk and there's nothing, nothing at all but hearing pony voices and they think I'm a statue so they never even talk to me, plus birds pooping on my head! Can you really do that with the power of Kindness?"

Fluttershy felt confused and dizzy, the world swirling around her as the contradiction sank in. What the Elements had done to Eris had been cruel beyond measure. Maybe they didn't know better, then. Maybe they hadn't known she would be awake in the stone. But now that Fluttershy knew... how _could_ Kindness condemn anyone to such a fate? Just for being socially inappropriate and making it rain chocolate? She was pretty sure Choco would make it rain chocolate if he could, and he was her dear friend, possibly even her best friend, certainly one of her best two with Rainbow Dash. 

"Can Kindness be so cruel?" Eris asked.

There was only one answer to that. "No," Fluttershy whispered, as if in a daze. The world seemed very far away.

"If they find the Elements they will use them. They'll make you use yours."

"I won't... I won't let them."

"Will you stop them? Will you prevent them from using the Elements on me?" Eris asked plaintively.

"Yes," Fluttershy said, feeling as if she were floating, although she wasn't because she didn't have wings and nopony was using magic on her. But her head seemed very far away from her hooves. "Yes, I'll stop them."

"Thank you, Fluttershy," Eris said, and hugged her. "In more than a thousand years you're the only one who hasn't been super mean to me, and I knew you wouldn't be but that doesn't change anything. Thank you for being you. I'm... I'm sorry, for what's got to happen, but I promise you, no matter how much chaos there is, I won't let you get hurt."

"You're my friend," Fluttershy said, slowly, almost mechanically, tasting the concept. "I won't let my other friends hurt you."

"Right! Because that's what friends do." Eris uncoiled herself, standing up. "Well, I really enjoyed this little blast from the past, but you know how it is! Gotta go! Chaos to make, ponies to upset, la la la!" She vanished.

A hedge fell down behind her, and she heard Twilight's voice. "Fluttershy! I'm so glad to see a friendly face. This awful labyrinth is getting to everypony."

Fluttershy turned around. Rarity had a giant boulder on her back, and was straining heavily under the weight. Applejack said nothing. There was no Choco or Rainbow. "I agree," Fluttershy said. "Let's all just leave right away."

"We can't do that! We have to find the Elements!"

"We probably don't even need the Elements," Fluttershy said. "We can probably just talk to Eris and I'm sure she'll stop."

Twilight blinked. "No offense, Fluttershy, but are you crazy? What about that mixed-up bag of chaos makes you think she'll stop doing anything? The Princess said we'd have to use the Elements of Harmony to stop her, and so that's what we're going to have to do!"

"Well, they're probably not even here," Fluttershy said. "Maybe she really did eat them."

"Who would _ever_ eat... such beautiful... gems?" Rarity panted. "Aside from a dragon, of course."

"She is a dracon-equus. That means dragon pony," Fluttershy said. "What if she _did_ eat them?"

"She didn't eat them, Fluttershy," Twilight sighed. "Let's just go find the rest of our friends."

Fluttershy walked away, mind racing. She did want to find her friends, but she couldn't let them find the Elements! Maybe once they were all together, she would run out of the maze and trigger the forfeit. Then they would never find the Elements and her good friend would be safe and she would never have to do anything cruel to anypony!

Behind her, she heard Rarity say, "A little help here!" She glanced behind her and saw Twilight help Rarity shoulder her burden. "Thanks, Twilight," Rarity said.

Twilight smiled. "You're welcome–"

"But don't get any ideas about my gem!" Rarity snapped. "I know where you live."

That was good... the two of them would be slowed down by the big boulder, so it would be harder to find the Elements. Fluttershy whistled a cheerful tune. Maybe she would trip them once or twice to slow them down, when she was sure it would be safe for them and they'd just fall on grass and not down a hill or something. All she had to do to save everypony was never let them find the Elements.


	4. Game Over

Twilight stared at her friends. Something was seriously wrong with them, but she couldn't imagine what.

Applejack wouldn't talk. She'd admitted that she _could_ talk, she just wouldn't. Rarity had plainly gone insane – not only did she think that boulder on her back was a diamond, but her aggression toward her friends was ludicrous even if it _had_ been a diamond. In her right mind, Rarity would know better than to think her friends wanted to take her gem, and she'd know better than to try to take the gem during a national crisis, and she'd recognize that if she found the gem in the Canterlot hedge maze, it was either a magical creation or it belonged to Princess Celestia. And Fluttershy, who had shown great reluctance out of fear but at least had been willing to move forward with the rest of them, now showed no further sign of fear and yet was constantly trying to suggest that they quit. 

Twilight knew of no spells that could do this, and right now it wasn't as if she could exactly head back to her library and research it. All she could think to do was to redouble her efforts to find Choco and Rainbow. Hopefully she could get to them in time, before Eris had a chance to do whatever weird thing to them that she'd done to the others.

She breathed heavily. This boulder was _so_ heavy.

* * *

The hedge maze was giving Choco an incredible sense of déjà vu, which was odd, because he was quite certain he'd never been here before. He'd been homeschooled on the rock farm, and self-taught after he'd gotten his cutie mark and fled to Ponyville, so he'd never had the opportunity to go on one of the field trips schoolfoals seemed to be perpetually going on, at least if he listened to Rarity's complaints about the frequency. He'd been to Canterlot a few times, on business or for the Gala or that ceremony of thanks that Celestia had held for them after they'd banished Nightmare Moon and restored Princess Luna, but the Canterlot Gardens had always inexplicably creeped him out. Too neat, the sculptured lines of hedge too precise and clean. It bothered him. And the statues. Most of the time statues didn't bother him, but when he'd caught a glimpse of the statues in the Gardens at the Gala, he'd started having flashbacks to his recurring nightmare of being turned to stone. Which hadn't helped his mood any and had probably contributed to Prince Bluenose's chocolatification later that evening. He'd _wanted_ to join Fluttershy because he wanted to spend time with Fluttershy, but he'd let his ambition to sell chocolates to the nobles and acquire a patron win out, and part of the reason had been that the Gardens unnerved him. So there was no way he could possibly have gone as far as the hedge maze, ever.

And yet. The twists and turns seemed so eerily familiar. And Eris' plan seemed so self-evident. Spirit of Discord, another name for Disharmony. Breaking ties between ponies would be a natural talent, and the Elements of Harmony only worked because they all worked together, on the power of friendship. She would be out to turn friends against each other. So, he just wouldn't let her. No matter what she threw at him, he knew better than to let her drive a wedge between him and his friends.

The sound of a "boom" surprised him. He turned, and saw fireworks exploding, over the next hedge. His cutie mark, the symbol of high energy celebrations and fun (and, though he didn't admit it when he told other ponies about his cutie mark, just a _touch_ of danger.) Obviously she was trying to lure him in, making him think there was a party or a celebration going on. Grimly, Choco considered his options. He could just go the other way, ignoring the fireworks, but something told him Eris wasn't going to let anypony ignore her. Better to confront her, make her see that _he_ wouldn't fall for her games.  He pushed through the hedge.

He was in an improbably large arena-like area, with streamers and dancing wacky-waving-foreleg-ponies flailing their balloon-like forelimbs, tables covered with sweets and hors d'oeuvres, and fireworks going off in the center against the backdrop of a grey-clouded, dimly lit sky. "Nice," he said, looking around himself as he trotted forward. "I'll say this for you, Eris, you can throw a decent party. If, you know, you'd bothered to _invite_ anypo—" Abruptly he tripped on something he was _certain_ hadn't been there a moment ago, and fell face forward into a mud puddle. The sound of laughter rang out, as if a dozen or more ponies were laughing at his misfortune. He looked up, pushing the mud out of his eyes with his forehoof. The firework displays remained hovering in the air, not dispersing as fireworks should, and they were forming into faces – laughing, mocking faces.

Choco scowled, hard. For a moment he forgot his resolution to stand up to whatever she could throw at him. "Shut up!" he yelled at the faces. "Stop laughing!"

And Eris appeared in a flash of light. "Ooo, what's the matter, Choco? Don't you like it when you can make others laugh?"

Choco got to his feet. "Not when they're laughing _at_ me, no."

"But your friends laugh at you all the time, so how is this different?"

"Nice try." He smiled at her thinly. "Most of the time, my friends are laughing _with_ me. And when they're laughing at me, it's generally because I've done something dumb that's worth laughing at, but it's all right because they're my _friends_. Friends can poke a little fun at you if they want, because you know it's not malicious."

"You're suuuuure about that?" she asked with lips pursed in an almost-pout, drawing out the word "sure" like she knew something he didn't.

"I know your game, Eris," he said. "You want to turn me against my friends."

She giggled. "Very good, Choco! Have a gold star!" She reached into the sky and pulled down the sun, throwing the world into shadow and nearly blinding Choco as she held a now-miniaturized sun out to him. "Woo, that's hot! I should have used oven mitts!" Now she had a pink and purple checked oven mitts on the paw that held the sun. "Come on! Don't you want your gold star?"

"Somehow I think that even with oven mitts, that particular gold star would be too hot for me to handle," Choco said. "How about you put that one back and give me a sticker, like the kind they have in the schoolhouse?"

Eris laughed again and snapped her talon, and the sun reappeared in the sky. "You sure do know a lot!"

"Yes, I do. Now if you'll excuse me, I have Elements to find. Unless you're planning to cheat at your own game and interfere with me?"

"Me? Cheat?" Eris sucked in a mock-horrified breath, paws pressed to her chest. "Never!" She coiled in the air, snaking around his head. "I do wonder, though, why you're okay with those mares laughing at you but not anypony else."

Choco sighed. "Nopony likes to be laughed at, but I grew up on a rock farm in the middle of nowhere. I've been through my share of embarrassing moments where ponies mocked me because of something I didn't know, and believe me, I can give as good as I got. Besides, all laughter is mockery when it comes right down to it; you just have to pick your targets, depending on your audience. Laughing at and laughing with are close enough if the ponies like you, and if they don't, you can turn laughing at to laughing with quickly enough by giving it right back to the ones mocking you."

"I see. I see." Eris was dressed in a labcoat with glasses, eagerly taking notes. "So the really important part is whether the ponies who are laughing are your friends or not?"

"Yes, or at least if they're inclined to be friendly to you."

"And making them laugh wins them over, so that they'll become friendly?"

He glared in her face. "If you're trying to develop a scientific understanding of comedy, I must warn you, I've been through this with Twilight. It's impossible to explain comedy with science. Once you dissect a joke it isn't funny anymore."

"So wouldn't you say that ponies are only your friends so long as you can make them laugh?"

That stung, a bit. Choco drew his head back, away from her. "I wouldn't say that, no."

"Because it hurts to admit to it. Doesn't it, Choco." Now she had an expression of faux sympathy on her long face. "But you can admit it to _me_. I know all about it!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The fact that you don't have any friends." Her head came forward again, her eyes boring directly into his. "Oh, you say they're your friends, you pretend as hard as you can, but you know the truth deep down inside. Nopony _really_ likes you, Choco. They put up with you because you make them laugh. And the moment you stop being funny, they'll drop you like a hot potato. Ooch! Hot hot hot!" A hot potato manifested in Eris' paw, and she promptly dropped it with a faked cry. "Someday I'll remember the oven mitts first..."

Part of him wanted to laugh at her antics, but the rest of him was too busy being offended – and unnerved. "That's not true. My friends like me!"

"They really don't, though," Eris said. "Did they ever invite you to a sleepover?"

"I'm a stallion."

"Uh-huh. You're different, and you know you'll always be different. You like arguments. You like mean jokes. You can barely bring yourself to obey the law, let alone all the silly rules ponies are supposed to obey about being friends! You don't see things the way they do, and they know it."

"But – no." Choco pulled his face away, trying to avoid her eyes.  "They're – they're still my friends, anyway..."

"They _need_ you to power the Elements of Harmony and be part of Princess Celestia's super secret superweapon," Eris said. "So they have to pretend."

"That's not true!" Behind him, he could hear the fireworks, still floating in the air, continuing to laugh hysterically. "They _are_ my friends!"

"But you didn't have _any_ friends before," Eris said. "You've been alone your whole life. Why would they be different?"

He tried to hold onto memories that contradicted her. The Cakes... but the Cakes had just wanted him for cheap labor. His family... but his parents had spent all their time punishing him for his rebellions and transgressions, and two of his sisters had gotten him into trouble every time they saw him do something Father wouldn't like, which was everything, and Maud had told him, quite seriously, that he didn't belong to the family and that fae creatures had obviously put him here in place of the sibling that should have been. The citizens of Ponyville... but they'd been so quick to laugh at him when his inadequate rock farmer's education had caught up with him and he hadn't known about some celebration or some custom civilized ponies engaged in. He'd had allies, useful ponies who had helped him here or there, but had he really ever had friends, before that fateful Summer Sun Celebration and the festivities he'd needed Twilight's help to organize? 

Eris' eyes were so blue. So very, very blue, like deep pools of water, like whirlpools pulling him down. Choco struggled. "N-no... they're different. They... they care..."

"They don't," Eris said bluntly. "You're really not a very nice pony, Choco. Nopony actually likes you. Not even Fluttershy. She's just too kind to say so."

"But... Fluttershy..." He _loved_ Fluttershy. How could she not even _like_ him?

The vista of his life opened up behind him in bleaker, darker colors than he could ever remember seeing it, and yet, it felt right. Horrible, but true. He had no friends. He had never had any friends. He wasn't a good pony. 

"All they care about is you being funny," Eris whispered, and it was as if it was his own mind whispering it to him, a truth he could no longer deny. "The moment you aren't funny anymore... they'll forget you exist. Completely."

Alone. Unloved, unliked, ignored. In his minds' eye, he spoke to ponies, and they walked right past him, as if he wasn't even there. He tried to offer them bits to buy things, and they ignored him, and when he acted out to demand that they pay attention, they chased him from their shops with a broom. 

"Everything you think you have, you stole," he heard Eris saying, from very far away. "None of it's for you. You never deserved any of it. And if ponies knew what you really are, they'd _hate_ you."

And then he heard Twilight's voice, gratingly cheerful. "Choco! Are we glad to see you!"

"Oh, you are, huh?" Choco turned to face her, and grinned savagely. "Need a good laugh? Is that it?"

"Uh... no..."

"Because I'm _always_ up for a good joke!" He laughed, piercingly, grabbing Applejack's hat off her head and twirling it on one hoof while he stood on the other.

Applejack gave him a dirty look, and pantomimed him returning the hat. "What's the matter, Applejack? Cat got your tongue? Oh, I forgot, you're more of a dog pony, aren't you? Well, if you love dogs so much, why don't you _fetch!_ " He tossed the hat over a nearby hedge.

"Choco, what's gotten into you?" Twilight demanded.

"I think we should all just go home and have a nice cup of tea," Fluttershy said. "That's sure to make us all feel better."

"As if I'd go to _your_ home!" Rarity shrilled. "You'd put something in the tea to make me fall asleep so you can take my beautiful Tom for yourself!"

"You named it Tom?" Twilight said skeptically, raising an eyebrow.

Choco chortled loudly. "Beautiful? Oh, Rarity, I think you need to get your eyes checked! If that hunk of worthless granite is _beautiful_ , I'd hate to see what your latest fashions look like! Maybe the newest style is garbage bags and lint?"

"That's _it!_ Come here so I can punch you!"

"Ooh, but Rarity, that's not ladylike at all! But come on, go ahead!" He darted next to her, and then away as she tried to swing at him, causing the large boulder to teeter precariously on her back, tipping off Twilight's and nearly crushing Rarity. "Oh, what a shame, you missed me!"

"You absolutely should take that gem home right now, Rarity," Fluttershy said. "Right this minute. You wouldn't want anything to happen to it!"

"Fluttershy, she can't leave now!" Twilight said. "If anyone stops playing, we forfeit!"

"Would that really be so bad? It's gotten so dim outside, how can we even see the Elements if they're here? I vote we come back tomorrow."

Applejack returned with her hat, leaves and twigs all throughout her mane and tail. She was ignoring him. Choco felt a sudden wild fury. Ignore him, would she? He wasn't funny enough for her, was he? Oh, he'd show her some funny. He'd show her funny she couldn't possibly ignore. "Hey, Applejack! _Tickle attack!_ " 

Choco was an earth stallion, with the enhanced strength of all earth ponies. Applejack was stronger than he was – bucking trees built up a lot more muscle than making chocolates – but he had a much better instinct for finding weak points. He tackled Applejack, landing on her back and driving her to the ground, and when she rolled under him to get her hooves in position to buck him off, he pinned her forelegs and used his nose and beard to tickle her in the joints between her barrel and forelegs, mercilessly. Applejack snorted, and struggled, biting her lip. "You're not laughing, Applejack? Why not? Am I not funny enough for you?"

"That's enough!" Twilight might only be a unicorn mare – without a horn, which made her useless – but she knew leverage, too; a buck in just the right place, and Choco went sideways off Applejack, allowing his victim to use her superior strength to free herself and pin him down. "All of you, knock it off! We need to find Rainbow Dash right away, before she turns as weird as the rest of you!"

"Oh, I'm weird now?" Choco panted. "Give it to me straight, Twilight, tell me how you really feel!"

"Yes, you are most definitely weird," Rarity snapped. "Tickling a mare, in public! How uncouth! If I didn't have to protect my lovely gem here, I would teach you a lesson you'd never forget!"

"Let's find Rainbow Dash and then go home," Fluttershy said. "It looks like it's going to rain! And there isn't even any rain scheduled for today! Maybe it would be chocolate rain, Choco, you'll definitely want to be home to get some buckets!"

"As if I think you actually care what _I_ want," Choco snapped.

"Applejack, please, say something," Twilight pleaded. "Help me control this madhouse."

Applejack shrugged, and started walking. "Everypony, follow Applejack!" Twilight shouted. "Let's find Rainbow, _now!_ "

* * *

As Rainbow Dash zipped through the maze, hiding behind shrubbery and charging forward at full speed once the coast was clear, she saw a cloud... shooting bolts of rainbow lightning. She grinned. "I've got you now, element," she said to herself, giving chase.

She followed the cloud into a clearing... only to run smack into Eris, who grabbed her in a hug. "DASHIE! I knew you'd find me!" 

Rainbow swung at the draconequus' exposed jaw, but Eris pushed her away before her hoof could connect, causing Rainbow to fall to the ground, since she didn't have her wings. "I guess I'm It now? I'll cover my eyes and count to twenty, and _you_ go hide!"

"This isn't a game!" Rainbow shouted at her. She reared up and made punching motions with her forehooves. "You'd better tell me where you hid the Elements, or I'm gonna knock the bats straight outta your belfry!"

Eris's eyes got big. "Oh, but Dashie, I've got something really important to tell you! Really really important! Like, supercalifragilisticexpialadociously important!"

"Yeah, I got something important to tell you too! Like _POW,_ right in the kisser!"

"No, really!" And suddenly Eris' face was in hers, and her forehooves were being held in the draconequus' talon and lion paw, with strength sufficient that Rainbow couldn't tear loose and punch her. "You gotta listen to me. Cloudsdale is gonna fall, and you're the only pegasus awesome enough to stop it!"

The news shocked Rainbow enough to make her stop struggling. "That... that doesn't make any sense! How can Cloudsdale fall?"

Eris let her go. " _I_ don't know, I didn't do it. Maybe nopony drank the cola I gave them and now it's too heavy to stay up! That's not important. What's important is that they need _you_ to save them!"

"But..." Rainbow twisted her head. Looking at the draconequus was making her feel dizzy for some reason. "My friends... we've gotta find the Elements!"

Eris hung her head. "Oh, I know, you wanna stick by your friends... but Dashie, you and I know the truth." Eris sidled up to her, one paw on her back and her head looking down at Rainbow as the rest of her body floated above. "They'll just drag you down," Eris said conspiratorially. " _You're_ the awesome one... and you're the one Cloudsdale needs right now. Your friends can get by without you for once. Not like you aren't always bailing them out the rest of the time, right?"

"They need me..." But when she looked into Eris' eyes, she saw panicked, terrified pegasi flying desperately out of the way as the pillars and cloud formations of Cloudsdale collapsed around them. "But... Cloudsdale? Fall... without me? No!"

"Cloudsdale needs you more than your friends do, right now," Eris said. "If they're good friends, they'll understand!"

Rainbow stumbled backward, dizzily. "Yeah, I... I gotta... wait a minute, how do I know you're telling the truth?"

"I _promise_ you this, Dashie," Eris said. "If you can go and save it, Cloudsdale will be absolutely safe. You know you're awesome enough to do it!"

"Yeah... yeah, I am... okay. Cloudsdale, I'm on my way!" She started to charge off.

"Wait!" Eris teleported in front of her, a paw held up. "You're gonna need these!" She held up Rainbow's wings in her talon.

Rainbow snatched at them, and in a split second, felt their sinew and muscle and the magic flowing around them, attached to her again. For a second, she remembered something Eris had said about forfeits... but Cloudsdale was a city of thousands of pegasi. She _had_ to be loyal to her home right now; her home needed her more. Equestria needed her to save Cloudsdale more than it needed her to help find the Elements.

She lifted off without a backward glance, making a beeline for Cloudsdale.

Down on the ground, Eris looked up at her. "And if Cloudsdale was really falling, you really _would_ have been awesome enough to save it, I bet," she said softly. "You made the right choice, Dashie. You weren't really disloyal at all. Just... kind of gullible!" Eris giggled. "Well, that's all that. Onward to Stage 2! Or are we on 3? I don't know, I wasn't really counting!"

* * *

Twilight was carrying Tom for Rarity again, by herself this time, staggering under the weight. Choco was continuing to be a jerk, Applejack was continuing to be silent, Rarity was continuing to be insanely possessive, and Fluttershy was continuing to suggest that they quit, every chance she got. There was only one thought Twilight was focused on, one thing that kept her going as she trudged through the maze with a giant boulder on her back. "Must... find... Rainbow Dash. As a team... we're unstoppable. Rainbow Dash won't let us down."

Choco giggled. "Well, hey, I guess they don't make loyalty like they used to! Look who's flying off!"

"That's not a funny joke, Choco," Twilight snapped, but looked up anyway, shrugging Tom off her back. To her horror, she saw that Rainbow was indeed flying off. Abandoning them. "No!" she gasped. "How can it be?"

Dark clouds rolled in, making the dim sky even darker. The ground shook, lightning flashed, and the hedges toppled over, leaves and twigs turning into bugs that scampered off to the tune of Rarity shrieking, until there was nothing left but a huge, dusty, empty plain where the hedge maze had been, surrounded by the garden. Eris emerged out of the dust, grinning manically.

"Guess what? Guess what? You'll never guess! Come on, guess!" Eris shrilled, bouncing on an invisible trampoline, bounding all around them, switching randomly from a bipedal to a quadrepal stance as she bounced, sometimes even bouncing on her coiled tail as if it were a spring. "Come on, Twilight! Guess!"

"What," Twilight said flatly.

Eris giggled hysterically. "Somepony broke the 'no wings' rule _and_ the 'everypony has to play' rule!" She snapped her talon, and Twilight felt a sudden surge of power and the sensation of her horn back on top of her head. Fluttershy's wings were back, as was Rarity's horn. "That means the game's over, and I won!"

"Oh, goody! Now we can go home!" Fluttershy said. 

"Whoopee! Let's go hide under our beds and pretend everything is okay!" Choco said, laughing harshly. "That'll solve everything!"

Twilight looked around herself in despair. Now that she had her horn, she could _see_ that her friends had changed. When she lit her horn, she could "see" patterns of magic, dimly, overlaid over reality. It was a form of synesthesia that many powerful unicorns had – most unicorns could merely feel magic with their horn, but mages could usually see or have some other secondary sense involved. Her friends _looked_ normal enough to her eyesight, but when she lit her horn and started seeing magic, their colors changed. Rarity's vivid mane, tail and cutie mark had dulled in hue, turning almost a blue-gray. Choco, whose neck was usually gray, had visibly dimmed all over, his black mane and goatee and his brown coat still visibly black and brown, but much dimmer shades of those colors. Fluttershy's yellow and pink had dulled in saturation but increased in brightness; they weren't grey, they were lighter, more pastel colors, but despite being colors that by nature should be washed out, they were almost painfully bright to look at, as if she shone with her inner magic, and Rarity's and Choco's inner magic had gone dull. Somehow. Applejack had turned a much paler orange, and her mane had dulled in hue, approaching gray. But none of them looked any different at all to her eye – well, aside from the fact that Rarity was still filthy.

"I have an idea!" Choco was saying. "Why don't we cut up Rarity's big rock into six pieces and make new Elements out of it? I'll bet they'll be as useful as the old ones have proven to be!"

"Hee- _yah!_ " Rarity bucked Choco in the side, sending him flying. "Just try it, you ruffian! He's _mine_ , all mine!"

Applejack got between the two of them as Choco tried to charge back at Rarity, on her hind legs with her forelegs out to separate them. Rarity sneered. "Oh, does Little Miss Silent have something she wants to express to us?" she asked.

"There's a frog in her throat," Choco said. "If she opens her mouth, the only thing that will come out is 'Ribbit, ribbit.'"

Eris floated around the group, giggling. "Heeheehee! You ponies are just so funny!"

"But – this isn't fair!" Twilight said. "How were we supposed to win when you're rigging the game, Eris?"

"I'm rigging the game?" Eris raised an eyebrow. "Hi there! I'm Eris, the spirit of disharmony and chaos! Have you met me?" 

"How are we supposed to find the Elements of Harmony when you took away the labyrinth before we could get to the end?"

"Um, forfeit? I win? Game over? And anyway,  why did you think the Elements were in the labyrinth?"

"But you said—"

"I said think of the most twisty idea you can think! A labyrinth's a twisty _place_ , not a twisty idea!"

"Ha! I knew it! You were wrong the whole time, Twilight," Choco said. "I knew they weren't in the labyrinth!"

Twilight stared at him. "Then why didn't you say so?"

"Oh, you'd never listen to _me._ I'm Choco Pie, team clown! Did you listen to me about Rainbow's griffin pal? No! Did you listen to me about the parasprites? No! Did you listen to me about the exploding marshmallow fluff fountains? No!"

"That sounds like a great idea!" Eris said. "Exploding marshmallow fluff fountains for _everypony!_ "

"Oh, yay," Fluttershy said, clapping her hooves and acting as if she was trying to cheer, except that her "yay" was barely above her usual hardly audible speaking tone.

"So then where are they?" Twilight demanded.

"I'm sorry, I thought we just covered this!" Eris said. "Do I look like the 'spirit of giving away the answers'? Huh? Do I?" She patted Twilight on the head. "I'll give you a hint, though... " She broke into song, dancing with a microphone in hand, hanging on lampposts that hadn't been there previously and jumping on boxes that had been equally nonexistent. "'E is for Eris, that's what they're calling me, E is for Evil, that's what I've got to be, E is for Everypony's gonna play with me, End it Bend it Friend it has an E!'"

"What?" Twilight stared, bewildered. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"Maybe the magic of friendship will help you figure it out!" Eris said. "Or maybe you could research it! I don't know where you could find any information, though, it's not like you live in a library!" She put her paws to her mouth. "Gasp! You _do_ live in a library!" She giggled. "Anyways, I've got chaos to make, ponies to confuse, so I gotta go! See ya back in Ponyville! It's going to be _so much fun_ when I get through with it!"

She vanished in a flash of light. 

Twilight looked around at her friends again, her despair deepening. Choco and Rarity were alternating between insulting each other and Applejack. Applejack looked utterly despondent but still refused to talk. Fluttershy was incongruously happy, singing little songs and skipping around. And more cotton candy clouds rolled over their heads, drenching all of them in cold chocolate milk.

"Twisty idea..." she whispered to herself. "Twist, rotation, loop... loop? Back to where we started! That would be a twist... but would that be the Castle of the Two Sisters, or the library, or... well, it doesn't matter! Eris said go research it in the library, maybe her stupid song has a clue in it!" She stood up straighter. "Guys! We have to go back to Ponyville! I think Eris' 'twisty idea' is that we have to loop back on ourselves, which would mean Ponyville or the Everfree, and I know I've got books in the library I can use to research this!"

"Oh, no, Twilight, that's a terrible idea!" Fluttershy said. "You were without your horn for so long. Now if you try reading books you're going to give yourself a terrible migraine!"

"No, I'm not," Twilight said.

Fluttershy made a stern face at her. "I think I know more about medicine than you do, Twilight."

"Well, I for one am eager to return home, secure Tom safely, and take a long, luxurious bath with him," Rarity said. "I know he's as eager to get this horrid dust off and let his true beauty shine as I am!"

"That is going to take a _lot_ of scrubbing," Choco said. "For both of you."

"I will hurt you."

"What're you going to do, throw Tom at me?"

"Let's just get home, everypony," Twilight said. "Come on."                 


	5. With Friends Like These...

Twilight was trying desperately to keep her spirits up. "I'm sure the library will help us find the Elements! There might even be a spell I can use to scry for them! And I can write to Princess Celestia for advice! She fought Eris before, maybe she knows something!"

The trains hadn't been running. They'd had to trot all the way from Canterlot, Twilight attempting to shepherd her four increasingly unruly friends. Applejack looked absolutely miserable, and had made several attempts to gag Choco or Rarity, to the point where they were giving her a very wide berth. She still refused to talk, and from the attempts to use her rope to tie their muzzles shut she seemed to be iffy on the concept of other ponies talking, either. Fluttershy had attempted to run off every time they saw an animal, claiming loudly that she had to take care of the poor creatures because they'd be so confused by all this chaos. Choco and Rarity had spent most of the trip sniping at each other, until Rarity had become too exhausted with the burden of carrying the giant boulder that she refused to put down. After that, Choco interspersed his insults and attempts to rile up his friends with remarks about how much more interesting the world looked now.

And it _was_ more interesting, in the sense of the Chineighse curse "may you live in interesting times." The sun had risen and set twice, and now that it was up again, it had a huge beaming smile on its face... which was hard to see because it was dangerous to look directly at the sun, but Twilight had used a spell to apply a filter over her eyes. The sun was also inexplicably wearing sunglasses. The cotton candy clouds kept floating over them and drenching them in chocolate rain, which invariably led to Choco refusing to move until he'd had a chance to drink as much as he wanted. Frequently the ground was made of colorful ribbons. Cannons sprouted randomly out of the ground, fired confetti into the air, and sank back down. The confetti usually turned into something else, such as butterflies.

By train, the trip to Canterlot took forty-five minutes. Trotting, it should take three. It was hard to tell with the sun rising and setting randomly, but Twilight was sure it had been at _least_ five hours since they'd begun their journey.

"Come on, everyone," she encouraged, looking behind her. "It's been a long haul, but we're almost there! Let's—"

At this point a stampede of long-legged rabbits trampled over her.

"Oh, no!" Fluttershy said. "Angel! Sorry, Twilight, but I can't go to the library and get the Elements because Angel is in that herd of bunnies!"

Applejack grabbed Fluttershy by the tail, with her teeth, preventing her from flying off. "Applejack, let go! I have to go save Angel!" Fluttershy protested.

"With legs like that, I'm pretty sure he can take care of himself," Choco snorted.

As Applejack tried to brace against the ground to hold onto Fluttershy, her legs suddenly slid out from under her, and she slid wildly, slamming into Rarity. The boulder was knocked off Rarity's back, and rolled.

"I _knew_ you were trying to steal my beautiful Tom!" Rarity shrilled. "Hi- _yaa!_ " Her attempt to perform a spinning martial arts kick on Applejack resulted in her spinning wildly like a top and crashing into Twilight, who was trying and failing to get up after being trampled by bunnies. Twilight slid several heads down the road on her stomach.

"Is this – _soap?_ Eris turned the road into soap!"

Eris dangled her head down from midair, revealing that she was floating above Twilight.  Twilight shrieked.

"It's not _just_ soap," Eris said indignantly. "Soap isn't sudsy at all if you don't mix it with some water." She landed on the soapy road and began to skate around on it. "Also, I added just a little bit of cooking oil for that extra slippery feeling!"

Choco skated past the two of them. "I bet you just think this is hilarious," he sneered.

Twilight struggled to get to her hooves again, and slipped, again. "Why would you _do_ this?"

"Because skating is fun! Who wants to wait until wintertime just to be able to skate? And then you need skates! And you can only do it on water! _Why not skate on land?_ " She laughed. "Don't you ever look at the world and ask why is it the way it is and why can't it be a different way because that would be more fun?"

"This isn't fun," Twilight said through gritted teeth.

"That's because you're not getting into the spirit of it! Come on! Loosen up! Live a little!"

"What's fun about my friends all being completely weird because you did something to them?"

Eris' head drooped slightly. As if she felt _guilt._ And then her eyes turned hard again. "Believe me, Twilight, I could have done a _lot_ worse," she said, her voice serious for once. And then the light-hearted demeanor returned. "But I didn't! So cheer up!"

Twilight finally got to her hooves, to face the sight of all the houses in Ponyville floating high in the air, some of them upside down; grass turned into festive streamers; confetti drifting from the air like snow, only to be soaked completely by chocolate milk; flowers coughing up pastries; potatoes with legs dancing a can-can; small baby alligators with no teeth wandering around everywhere. "How am I supposed to cheer up in the face of _that?_ " she asked, pointing her hoof at the chaos.

Eris pouted. "You don't want to see my chaos?" she said, improbably large eyes filling with fake tears. A light bulb appeared over her head, and lit. "Idea!" She grinned and snapped her talon. The sun slid across the sky like it too was skating on a soap road, and the moon popped up, with the image of the Mare in the Moon on it, wearing a great deal of brightly colored lipstick. "Now you can't see it!"

"Is that Princess Luna?" Twilight demanded, pointing at the sky.

"Naah, sending ponies to the moon is so overdone. That's just a picture. Do you like it? I used my very best paintbrush!" Eris pulled out a random tube of mascara and started painting her own eyelashes. "I'm not sure it came out the way I wanted, though, what do you think?" The mascara, despite appearing black, was putting outrageously long lashes on Eris' eyes in bright and clashing clownish colors.

"I think I need to get to the library," Twilight said through gritted teeth.

"Right! Lots of important research to do! Well, I'll leave you to it; I've got ponies to invite to a party!" She cackled. "It's going to be the best party Ponyville has ever seen, and every pony is invited! Whether they wanna party with me or not."

She skated off. Twilight was quite sure she didn't want to see what Eris considered 'the best party Ponyville has ever seen.' "Come on, everypony," she pleaded with her friends. "Just a little while longer. We're almost there."

Fluttershy moaned dramatically. "Oh, no, I hurt myself so badly falling down on this soap road. I couldn't possibly go on. You can all go without me, though, that would be okay."

Applejack rolled her eyes and started pulling Fluttershy's tail, dragging her along the soap road. Fluttershy scrabbled to free herself at first, and then said, "Applejack, thank you so much! You must have straightened out my back. I can walk by myself now." She got to her hooves, and started ostentatiously limping, except she couldn't seem to remember which one of her legs was supposedly hurt.

Rarity was rolling her boulder down the soapy road. "Oh, Tom, you're going to sparkle so beautifully when this is done," she said in a cloying tone. "I must thank Eris for giving us all this soap! Oh, and the oils are setting off your natural iridescence so nicely!"

Diamonds were not naturally iridescent, they were prismatic. There was a difference. And that thing wasn't a diamond anyway.

Choco was far, far ahead, having somehow instantly managed to master the art of walking – or rather, gliding – on a soap road. "What's wrong with you slowpokes?" he taunted. "I bet you I'll get to the library before any of you, and _I'll_ figure out where the Elements are. And then I'll hide them for a prank, and we'll see how hard you laugh then!"

"We're almost there," Twilight repeated, because if she kept saying it, maybe she could make herself believe it.

* * *

The library loomed in front of her. Eris hadn't done anything to it, thank Celestia. (Although Twilight realized that Celestia had absolutely nothing to do with it.) "Okay, we're here," she said, sighing. "Everyone please, please, please just go inside, please?

"I c-can't!" Fluttershy cried out. "There's a sp-spi-spider!"

"Fluttershy, you have pet spiders."

"But those are my pets! This is a spider I don't even know!"

"I know what you're up to, Twilight," Rarity said, glaring. "The second I go in, you'll have your little minion Spike come and take Tom!"

Twilight facehooved. "I. Don't. Want. Your. Diamond." She didn't bother pointing out that it wasn't a diamond.

"I do!" Choco cackled. "I'm going to roll it straight into the Everfree and push it into a patch of Poison Joke! I bet you'll laugh at that, won't you, Rarity?"

"Try it and I'll break every bone in your misbegotten body," Rarity fumed.

Applejack gestured with her head at the rock. Rarity glared at her. "I won't let you have it either!"

"I think she's offering to carry it inside for you," Twilight said. Applejack nodded.

"A likely story! I'll put it on her back and she'll run away!"

Despite her belligerence, it was obvious that Rarity was at the end of her endurance. She'd been carrying or rolling that stupid boulder all the way from Canterlot. "Applejack. For Rarity's sake, _please_ say something. Explain to her that you aren't going to take her diamond."

With one hoof, Applejack drew a circle in the dirt, a diamond shape inside the circle, and a line through the circle, crossing the diamond. She looked up at Rarity with a huge expectant smile, while Twilight had to control the urge to facehoof again.

"As if anyone can read that scribble. That isn't even words!" Rarity sniffed. Applejack's face fell.

"How about _I_ bring it in, then?" Twilight said, sighing.

"You're just as bad! You'll steal my beautiful Tom—"

"Rarity!" Twilight said sharply. "I'm the personal student of Princess Celestia. If I asked the Princess to give me a big gem to feed to Spike, or for my studies, she'd just _give_ me one. I don't _need_ your diamond."

"Hmm. That is an excellent point. Very well, Twilight. But I'm watching you!"

"I'm not going in there," Fluttershy said. "That building is made out of a _tree!_ It could catch fire and burn us all to death!"

"Fluttershy. Your house is made out of a tree also."

"Yes, but _this_ one has a baby dragon inside," Fluttershy said triumphantly.

Applejack snorted impatiently and grabbed her by the tail, dragging her. "Or I guess I could go in," Fluttershy said.

Choco had at some point slipped into the library while Twilight was arguing with Rarity, and had knocked most of the books on the floor. He was busily engaged in stacking them in a tower as if they were a house of cards. Spike was asleep on the floor, holding a mop and a bucket. Twilight felt bad for him – he must have been very nervous. Sometimes Spike obsessively cleaned when he was nervous, not because he was naturally inclined to be overly obsessed with cleanliness but because he felt like he had to do something useful that Twilight would approve of. The anxiety seemed to be related to her leaving him behind, but it wasn't as if Twilight had had a choice, this time. But it was irritating that now, when she needed him, he was fast asleep and ignoring Choco making a wreck of the library.

"Stop that!" Twilight yelled. "Those are books, not toys!"

"Au contraire, ma chere amie! If they weren't toys, then how could I do this with them?" Choco asked, and started juggling books. He had nine of them in the air when Twilight lit her horn and plucked them away. "Oh, you're no fun!"

Twilight took a deep breath. "All I need is the book about the Elements," she said to herself. "All I need—"

Choco then proceeded to dump the bucket of mop water on Spike, and laugh uproariously. Spike jerked awake. "Huh? Ah! What's going on? Why am I wet?"

"Because Twilight picked a new assistant, and that means you're all _washed up!_ " Choco said, laughing harder. "Get it?"

"Twilight, what—"

"No, I haven't. He's lying," Twilight said tiredly.

"I am not! I'm _joking!_ What's the matter, Twilight, can't you take a joke?"

"Why are they all gray?" Spike asked.

He could _see_ that? Twilight blinked, startled. The graying effect had deepened to the point where it was visible to her eyes, not just to her perception of magic. Fluttershy was still unnaturally bright, but all of the others had turned into shades of grey. "Never mind that. I need the book about the Elements."

"Sure thing, Twilight!  It's probably still under E!"

Spike went to get it. Fluttershy got to it first. "I have it, Twilight!" she said. "But oops! I dropped it!"

In front of Choco Pie. Who laughed again. "Who's up for a game of keep-away?"

"Give me that!" Twilight demanded. "We need that to defeat Eris!"

"Eris, schmeris! _I'm_ having fun!" Choco practically danced out of the way every time Twilight lunged at him. "Oh, Rarity! Present for you!"

"A present? For me? Where is it?" Choco kicked the book over to Rarity just as Twilight was about to close on it, and Rarity pounced. " _MINE!_ "

"That's not yours! That's the book about the Elements of Harmony!"

"Finders keepers, losers weepers!"

"You didn't _find_ it! Choco tossed it to you!"

"Just because Choco didn't give _you_ a present is no reason for you to be so rude and greedy as to try to take mine!"

"Applejack, Spike! Help me out here!"

Applejack looked at Rarity, looked at Twilight, looked at Rarity again, and then lay down, face in her hooves.

"Come on, Rarity," Spike wheedled. "Twilight really _needs_ that book!"

"Then she should have thought of that before giving it away!"

"Do you even know what that book is?" Twilight demanded.

"No," Rarity admitted, "but if you want it, I want it!"

Twilight screamed in frustration. "GIVE ME THAT BOOK!"

She lunged at Rarity, and was tripped by Choco, who laughed obnoxiously. When she looked up from the floor Rarity was nowhere to be seen. "Where is she? Where's Rarity?"

"Um, I think she ran out the door? You should go catch her," Fluttershy said.

Twilight's eyes narrowed, staring at the rock. And then she lunged, leaping into the air, and on top of Rarity, who was on the other side. "Give me the _book!_ "

"Never!"

"Ooh, wrestling! Can I join in?" Choco asked, and threw himself on top of both of them.

_Wait a minute. I have a horn_ , Twilight thought. Hers lit up, and she threw both Choco and Rarity off herself, grabbed the book, and practically fell over on the floor. "Get back! All of you! This is my book, and I'm going to READ IT!"

She opened the book.

The Elements were nestled inside.

"The Elements! They were here all along!" Twilight wanted to kiss them. In just a few moments, they could turn everything back to normal.

"This is great!" Spike said. "Now you guys can defeat Eris and put everything back to normal!"

"See, everyone?" Twilight said triumphantly. "We did it! We found the Elements of Harmony! Together!"

Fluttershy's eyes filled with tears. "No, we can't! We can't use them! We can't!"

Twilight stared at Fluttershy. "Why not?"

"Because they'll turn her to _stone!_ It's cruel, it's too cruel! I won't be part of this, I won't!" She flew out the window, sobbing.

"Wait a minute wait a minute wait a _minute_ ," Choco said. "Stone? We're talking about turning someone to _stone?_ For making it rain _chocolate milk?_ "

"And for turning you and Rarity into huge jerks and making Applejack turn mute and wrecking the roads and all kinds of other things," Twilight said.

Choco shrugged. "That's just chaos. Chaos isn't so bad. I rather like it. But then that's right, _you_ don't like anything that's fun!"

"What's _fun_ about what Eris did to Ponyville? Or anywhere?" Twilight demanded.

"Everything!" Choco said. "And if you're going to turn someone to _stone_ for liking chaos, count me out!" He stomped through the door, slammed it, then reopened it, stuck his head in and said "Not like you were ever really my friends anyway." Then he slammed the door again.

Twilight wanted to cry. Without Rainbow, Fluttershy and Choco, they had no hope of getting the Elements to work.

"There's no hope. We're finished," she moaned.

"Yes, he's got such a lovely finish, don't you think?" Rarity cooed, stroking her boulder, obviously paying no attention whatsoever. "But don't go getting ideas!"

"You don't even care, do you?" Twilight asked.

"No!" Rarity replied.

Applejack looked at Twilight pleadingly. "I know you still care, Applejack," Twilight said. "I just wish you would _talk._ "

Applejack shook her head ferociously. Twilight sighed. "Well, three out of six... isn't good. But... but wait. We have other friends. Ponies we don't know as well, but they might exemplify the traits the Bearers need as well. Spike, you're the most loyal creature I know. Congratulations, you are now the new Rainbow Dash." She put Loyalty around his neck. "Necklace for you. Necklace for you. Necklace for you."

"Ooh!" Rarity cooed. "You can give me all those extras, too."

"No," Twilight said. "We need to go find some _real_ friends who aren't total jerks and get them to help!" She put the Element of Magic on her head. "Girls. Spike. Let's go find somepony."

"B-b-but what if Rainbow finds out I've been impersonating her?" Spike asked with a moan. "That won't end well."

Twilight sighed. "We can't defeat Eris without all six Elements. Rainbow, Fluttershy and Choco have all abandoned us. You're loyal, so you're Rainbow. Let's see who can be Fluttershy and Choco."

* * *

Ponyville was an even bigger disaster outside, now. Giant upside-down ice cream cones, slowly melting, replaced many of the trees. The water tower was shooting out all of its water in a giant spray upward that came back down as rain. Lemonade rain, to be precise. Rocks that Twilight stepped on yelled at her for being careless with her hooves. And a group of ponies were playing Pin the Tail on the Pony with Derpy Hooves, as the hapless pegasus flew around in circles trying to retrieve her tail, which was somehow detached from her body.

Twilight charged forward. "Hey! Hey, what are you doing?"

"You wanna play too?" Bon Bon said eagerly. "Here, you try!" Somepony wrapped a blindfold around Twilight's eyes and stuffed Derpy's tail into her mouth.

Angrily, Twilight levitated the blindfold off, and marched over to Derpy, taking the tail out of her mouth with her telekinesis. "Here. You dropped this," she said, putting it back on Derpy's body, where it miraculously stuck.

"You're using unicorn powers! That's cheating!" Roseluck yelled.

Twilight turned around. "I am having a very bad day and I have to defeat someone who drives ponies insane. Don't get in my way."

The ponies scattered. Derpy said, "Don't be mean to them. They were just having fun, that's all."

Unlike the ponies tormenting her, who had all been grayed at least somewhat, Derpy was as colorful as she ever was. Of course she was normally a gray pony, but her mane was still bright blonde. "They were being mean to you."

Derpy shrugged. "Ponies make fun of me all the time. You can decide to get upset about it or you can decide to laugh, that's all. If I laugh with them then they're laughing with me, not at me."

A sudden hope sprang up within Twilight. "Hey, would you be willing to wear this necklace and help me and my friends who are still left defeat an ancient spirit of disharmony and chaos who's destroying Ponyville and driving everypony crazy? Great, I'm so happy you're coming with us!" Before Derpy could say anything Twilight dropped Laughter around her head.

"Pretty," Derpy said, tilting her head down so one of her eyes could see it. "But I can't help out. I have to get over to the school. All this crazy stuff is happening and Dinky is in class. I gotta make sure she's okay."

"That sounds like a great idea! We'll all go! And we'll try to find a kind pony along the way! And then we can defeat Eris!" She turned back to Applejack, Rarity and Spike. "We have our replacement Choco and we're going to school! Let's go!"

"Why did you give _her_ that necklace?" Rarity complained. "You should have given it to _me._ Such a lovely, fabulous necklace. Totally wasted on a stallion like Choco or a pathetic pony like Derpy."

"Ignore her," Twilight said. "Eris did something to her head. I don't know what but hopefully after we defeat her, Rarity will be back to normal. Either that or I'll never have to see her again. Both choices are great at this point."

They made their way across the chaos. There were balloons swooping in, looping cords around ponies and carrying them off. Twilight saw a game of musical chairs where the pony left behind after a chair was removed poofed into a bunny rabbit... and then noticed several bunnies sitting, watching the game. Choco had completely covered himself in vanilla ice cream and was leaping out at ponies, screaming "Wooooo, I'm a ghost!" One of the Flower Trio whose name Twilight couldn't remember fainted dead away, but Roseluck, who was solidly gray, tried to beat him with a bouquet.

At the school, however, there was nothing but calm.

All the shades had been pulled. Twilight, fearing the worst, knocked on the door. She heard Cheerilee's voice, inside, and then Cheerilee came to the door and peered out, then slipped through the door, never allowing it to open enough for the foals to see what was going on outside. "If you're still sane and you're looking for a safe place, for some reason the school's been left alone," she said nervously. "I've been reading to the students."

Twilight glanced back at Applejack and Rarity. "Actually, we're not all still sane, but that's not the point. Derpy's sane and she wants to check on Dinky, and Applejack wants to check on Apple Bloom." She had no idea if this was true or not because Applejack hadn't said anything.

"What about Rarity and Sweetie Belle?"

"Rarity... shouldn't go inside." Rarity was sitting down, caressing her necklace with her hooves.

"All right," Cheerilee said, "but be very careful when you come in. I don't want the foals to see... anything outside, right now. It'll only upset them." She slipped back through the door, followed by Derpy, Applejack, Twilight and Spike. Rarity didn't even notice them, engrossed as she was.

"Dinky!" Derpy called to her daughter, and flew over. _Huh. Her daughter's a unicorn,_ Twilight realized. "I was so worried!"

Dinky returned her mother's hug. "Why were you worried? We got back from our field trip _hours_ ago!"

Apple Bloom was hugging Applejack, but looking nervously at Twilight. "Miss Twilight? Why is my sister all gray, and why won't she talk?"

"Long story," Twilight said. "There's a lot of craziness going on outside."

"But it's all going to be fine," Cheerilee said reassuringly. "We'll just sit tight right here and wait for Miss Twilight and her friends to fix everything."

"Actually. Maybe you can help with that." Twilight took a deep breath. "Children? Is Miss Cheerilee a kind teacher?"

"She's the best!" Sweetie Belle agreed enthusiastically.

"Thuper kind!" Twist agreed.

"Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo. Would you guys be up for trying to get a cutie mark in disaster management? Your job is to watch over your friends here in class and make sure nopony leaves the school."

"But school is almost over!" Scootaloo complained.

"There's a creature of chaos out there who looks like a zoo in a blender and she's driven everyone in Ponyville crazy, including Rainbow Dash and Rarity, and the world has turned upside down and it's _not safe._ You need to keep everyone safe. That means none of you leave."

"Does that mean we get to tell Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon what to do?" Scootaloo asked enthusiastically.

" _I'm_ not going to take your orders," Diamond sniffed.

"Fine, go outside and get turned into a newt," Twilight said. "We'll just have to explain to your father that you couldn't follow simple instructions."

Cheerilee cleared her throat. "Miss Twilight, this is all very interesting but these students are _my_ charge and I'm the one who'll be taking care of them."

"Not right now. You're kind. I need you to help me save the world." She levitated Kindness onto Cheerilee's neck. Cheerilee tried to shake it off.

"I'm a schoolteacher! Not a hero!"

"You're a hero to these kids. Besides, the last Kindness was a terminally shy veterinarian. You'll do fine. Come on."

As they left the room, Twilight distinctly heard Apple Bloom saying, "Creature of _chaos?_ You don't think we had something to do with this, do you?"

Well. She'd check into that later. Right now she had a draconequus to defeat.

* * *

It didn't take very long. They had barely gotten a trot away from the school when Eris appeared in front of them. "Gasp! You've found the Elements of Harmony!" She put her paws to her cheeks in an exaggerated "oh no" expression.  And then her eyes narrowed. "And you found _three_ new pals. What happened to the old ones?"

"You know perfectly well what happened to them, because you did it!" Twilight snapped.

"Well, I know what happened to _Dashie_ , and I can guess what happened to Fluttershy, but where's Choco?"

"Playing one of your stupid games. He didn't want to turn you to stone because you drove him crazy and now he loves chaos."

Eris laughed hysterically, falling on the ground and kicking her legs into the air. "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! You don't even know – you have no idea what you just said! Oh my gosh that was the funniest thing _ever!_ " She leapt to her feet and glared down at Twilight. "How well do you even _know_ him?"

Through gritted teeth, Twilight said, "I know enough to know he was a really good friend before you messed with his head."

"Oh, no. Oh, no." Eris chuckled darkly. "Choco Pie is _not_ a good friend, Twilight. Not a good friend at all. You need to remember that." Suddenly she was next to Twilight, half-twined around Twilight's barrel. "You could be friends with _me!_ I'm a better friend than Choco!"

Twilight extricated herself. "I'm not here to make friends with you. I'm here to defeat you. I figured out your lame riddle, I found the Elements, and I found new friends to replace the ones you drove away."

Eris laughed again. "Oh, right, of course! What is it I'm supposed to be doing now? Oh, that's right! Getting defeated!" She teleported to a standing position. "Wait wait wait, before you turn me into stone for another eternity, tell me how is this face?" She stuck her tongue out. "Or should I do this one?" Googly eyes and paws pressed against her face so hard she was squashing it into a vertical elongation.

"Take formation!" Twilight shouted to her friends.

"Um, what formation? I've never done this," Cheerilee said.

"Applejack, can you explain—" Facepalm. Right. She wouldn't talk. "Rarity, can you explain to Derpy and Cheerilee what they're supposed to be doing here?"

"What's in it for me?" Rarity asked.

"Spike! New Rainbow Dash! Get over here!"

Spike visibly swallowed. "Are you sure this is going to work, Twilight?"

Twilight ignored that. "We stand in a semicircle and concentrate!"

"On _what?_ " Cheerilee asked helplessly, as Applejack nudged her into position. Eris was sitting on a couch, ostentatiously painting her toe claws with brightly colored nail polish that kept changing color.

"I'm not good at concentrating," Derpy said shakily.

"Just do your best!" Twilight said.

She concentrated, tapping into the well of power that was her Element. She could feel Rarity and Applejack in the link, and distant presences, she assumed that of the other three. _Come on, this has to work._ Twilight reached down into her Element and rose into the air, wind blowing around her and the world turning white.

And then she was tumbling to the ground, with Rarity and Applejack. There was no sign that Spike, Derpy or Cheerilee had ever activated.

"What's going on?" Twilight asked, desperately, but she knew.

"I just don't know what went wrong," Derpy said helplessly.

"They never turned on." Cheerilee took off her necklace and laid it on the ground. "Sorry, but I have to go take care of the children. I think you're going to have to go get your friends. I mean, not like we're not friends, but your other friends."

"MINE!" Rarity screeched, grabbing Kindness. Twilight telekinetically snatched it back.

"Sorry, Twilight. I guess I'd better get back home and clean up the library. Good luck with all this," Spike said, laying Loyalty at Twilight's feet.

Derpy turned even grayer, her aura dimming, her blonde mane desaturating. "I always mess everything up. Nothing I try to do ever works." She lifted into the air. "I'm sorry," she said, and flew away, dropping Laughter.

Eris chortled. "Good work, everypony! I'm feeling so stoned now, you wouldn't believe!" She cackled. "Guess that means I win, huh!" There was a microphone suddenly in her paw, and she was singing. "I am the champion, you are the losers 'cause I am the champion..."

Twilight growled angrily at her. She just laughed. "This was loads of fun! Let's do it all over again some other time!" she said, and skated off on the soapy roads.

"It didn't work," Applejack said.

Twilight turned. Applejack was completely dull gray now. "Applejack! You talked!"

"It didn't _work!_ " Applejack screamed. "I saw the truth was gonna destroy our friendships and I didn't want to lie so I just kept my mouth shut, but _you_ kept telling the truth and now you ruined it! Our friends are gone, Rarity's plumb crazy and so's Choco and Fluttershy's gone and become a traitor and whoever knows what happened to Dash, and it's _your_ fault 'a cause you wouldn't stop _talking!_ "

Rarity snorted. "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Like you can talk, Miss Prissypants who thinks a giant boulder's a sparkly diamond! You're the craziest of all of us!" Applejack snorted. "I got a family to take care of. Who knows what kind of crazy things Eris did to them? Twilight, I'm outta here."

"And _I_ have a diamond to care for," Rarity said loftily.

Twilight screamed at them as they both trotted off. "FINE! Leave! See if I care! I don't need you guys either! With friends like you, who needs...enemies...?"

Tears welled in her eyes. All the energy left her body, and she just sagged.

She walked off as well. Not toward the library. Not toward any direction. Chaos ruled, and no direction was better than any other.

* * *

 

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